I had an idea that I'd like to capture the pain of walking around in too much beauty all the time. Human beings being beautiful and good, beautiful architecture, beautiful nature. It can be too much. It is just. too. beautiful. The beauty makes my heart want to explode, and yet, it can't.
And so in some ways, the only way I feel I can describe it is as some sort of pain. I've tried to explain it to my closest friends, sometimes we refer to it as "overwhelming feelings" or being "highly sensitive people," but in the end, what came to mind in terms of expressing such emotions was probably what we ended up best capturing in the fourth gif here where I'm sitting with my head down.
Sometimes, things around me are just so beautiful, that on the inside, my natural reaction would be some sort of fetal position. What usually happens is a physical reaction, but a more happy one. Happy movements, moving quick, exclaiming with joy. Joy in motion. Yet with the inner pain of not being able to contain so much beauty in one single person.
I'm calling the series "Too much" because of this experience of not knowing how to process and contain so much beauty, but also because it reminds me of a phrase we can sometimes hear in relationships, or a fear we might have in general in society - being "too much." A couples therapist once heard me say that and she stopped me and said something along the lines of how part of being in a secure relationship is knowing that you'll never be too much. Sometimes, being yourself can be scary because you don't want to be too much.
Making this series definitely brought these "too much" fears to the service, making weird positions in the middle of Place Masséna. But worth it, and so much easier to do with a good friend.
My friend Flor helped me capture these images on her mirrorless Sony, and the ones towards the end are on my Nikon z7ii. I did the editing. I'm excited to keep being creative together.
Stills
The photographers
