"There's someone in my head but it's not me."
Roger Waters
Gregory Crewdson, Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand were a great inspiration for this project. The concept behind it is attributed to Jung’s theory of the shadow. Jung followed Freud’s theory of the unconscious as the psychic part which is formed by repressed wishes, but evolved it further to include the ‘archetypes’. These archetypes include the ‘persona’, which is represented as the mask one wears to protect themselves from other people; the ‘animus and anima’, which are the masculinity and femininity that each one has irrespective of their sex; and the ‘shadow’ which represents the dark side of each person. “The shadow has the deepest roots and is the most dangerous and powerful of the archetypes. It represents our dark side, the thoughts, feelings and actions that we tend to disown by projecting them outward.” It includes the repressed thoughts and actions that were rejected by the superego.
All these archetypes lie within the unconscious and hence they are out of reach. One is not aware of them, although they may appear in dreams. Jung believes that the dreams offer a path that leads to the unconscious. In fact he believes that it is important to interpret them as they can be seen as an act of warning. In these photographs, the self is represented by familiar places and places where one feels comfortable. The sinister feel that lies within the images represents the shadow that is present in each and every person but is not aware of. This creates an interesting contradiction between serenity and fear and the viewer responds to it according to what Jung calls his ‘sage’, that is his past life experiences.
