Blinded
Shielded
Absurd
Deterred
Meaning
Philosophers believed that everyone was born with an ‘essence’ from God and that to be a good human you should be living up to your essence. Essence, to the essentialists, was the core property that everything was given when created. Thousands of years pass and along come the existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre asked, “What if we are born without any purpose?”. This was the base behind existentialism, where the philosophers stated that “Existence precedes essence”, that everyone is born with “no predetermined purpose”. Existentialists also believed that God had made the everything without any purpose. This meant to existentialists that we are born into a world without any meaning. They believed that looking for answers in an answerless world was ‘absurd’. To find meaning in your own life, existentialists believed you had to be authentic, that you had to make your own choices. If you follow anything that someone else has set for you then you believe that there is meaning out there which was not given by you.
In my work, my photos are showing a model who is blinded by the absurd. She can’t see authentically and looks for meaning (or essence) through others. Finally, she becomes clear of her essence and has become free from the absurd.