Numb: A Senior Listener Lyric Photographic Diptych by Caroline Schachter (2017)

My lyrical essay, titled “Numb,” represents what it’s like for someone experiencing depression. I learned from my interview subject that experiencing depression can be a very on off situation, where sometimes there are highs, most mostly lows.

I chose this specific passage to inspire my photography because this passage shows the lows a person with depression can experience, and how you can go from very happy to all of a sudden cold and alone. Another part of depression is the numb feeling that the person feels when they are having these thoughts. In the photo, a person is shown walking alone, isolated, and in the dark, which can represent how someone with depression feels. To edit my photo, I traced my subject with blue and filled in the subject with a lighter blue, to make the subject stand out from the image, with keeping the feeling of isolation and sadness, because blue is often considered a melancholy color. I placed the text inside another outline of the subject to show that the words are part of the person, and to show that this is how that person feels.