Photo 2 - Project #5 - Blooming Irritation

 

PHOTO ESSAY

For this project I wanted to make a series of photographs based on my experiences with eczema. For those who don’t know, eczema is “a chronic inflammatory skin condition causing itchy, dry, red, and inflamed skin that can crack, scale, or crusts”. It’s a condition that I’ve had since I was a baby and it used to be a way bigger pain to deal with than it is now. However, as with pretty much all chronic conditions, there are still frequent bad days. These photos are based on those kinds of days specifically. Instead of showing the rashes however, I chose to show the paint and discomfort in those areas via covering them with flowers. The flowers I chose to draw are Petunias because in floriography, a language of flowers stemming from the Victorian period, Petunias can mean irritation, anger, and resentment. The reason I chose to portray this issue through flowers is because I’ve always had a love for them and I have a fascination with Floriography as a whole being used to make conversations without the need for speaking. Sometimes it makes it easier to get feelings across when words aren’t enough. I made this project by recording myself from multiple angles on my phone and taking screenshots of my favorite poses afterwards. Then I removed the background of each photo in Canva so I could later put them into Procreate to edit them. In Procreate I used a saturation layer to make each photo black and white, then drew over top of them with various brushes. I also used an exclusion layering type to make the colors blue and red over my skin in the pictures. Overall, I really enjoyed the process of making these and it was a fun experience using my drawing app to edit photos. It was also an exercise in confronting something about my body that is usually seen as gross. Eczema can be gross, rashes bleed, flake, and have left  multiple blood stains on my pillows and sheets, but it’s not something I can ignore. If I do that, then it’ll just get worse and my quality of life will be even more affected than it already is. So being continuous with the fabrics I wear, skincare and haircare I use, shower temperature, irritants, and keeping my bedding clean more often is a small inconvenience if it means my skin feels more comfortable to live in. One thing I would do differently next time is using different configurations of flowers between all the photos. For this project I only drew one grouping of Petunias and copy and pasted it on each picture, but next time I would rather draw new groupings for each specific pose. I also think I would work more details into the drawings themselves so that they stand out more and appear more like they’re growing out of the skin and not sitting on top of it. I would also try more poses in the future to get better coverage of how much of my body is actually affected by my eczema.