Bi-Polar

Polarity

An Introduction

For a number of different reasons, my life unraveled somewhat spectacularly when I was around twelve years old. I share this story in depth in my memoir, The Color of Everything, but in short, my mercurial nature became overwhelming, my emotions intensified, and my ceaseless acts of defiance amplified the inner turmoil. I was at war with myself and everyone else. Eventually, I was hospitalized in the psychiatric unit of Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah. After a week, I was moved to a long-term behavioral rehab center where I stayed for eight months. After running away from treatment on three occasions, I ended up briefly homeless.

This was a pivotal period in my development as an artist even though I made no art at all. The experience started to shape how I see people and the world and how it’s all woven together. If art is emotion, these years would become a bottomless reservoir of inspiration. It was also during this period that I was diagnosed with bipolar 2. I was fourteen.

It can be easy to confuse a diagnosis with identity and, at the time, I understood the “bipolar” label as a sentence that would keep me perpetually trapped in turmoil. I thought my unpredictability would always consume me, that my mind was fragile, and madness was hidden just out of sight. But I misunderstood. The bipolar mind does not feel more deeply . . . it rather feels more intensely. Emotions are ubiquitous and fire is always hot. I experience emotion right at the tip of the blue flame, the hottest part. When you live life there and you aren’t careful, it can be easy to get burned. But like so many of life’s hurdles, my tempestuous mind would ultimately become my greatest gift.

Early on and until very recently, I confused my sensitivity for empathy. It’s important to understand the difference. Sensitivity is an internal emotional reaction to external forces. Empathy is a mindful outward response to the emotional experiences of others. Ironically, bipolar individuals often have trouble with empathy because we’re too overcome by our sensitivity. (I still want to crawl out of my brain some days.) Thankfully, over time, I’ve found ways to leverage the emotional tides. Rather than a flood that I drown in, that same madness has become an ocean of reference for what I see. The gift of bipolar has been the ability to identify what emotions look like, both in myself and others. I’ve learned that if I can see emotion, I can feel it. And when I feel it, I’m invited to respond to the emotional experience of others and the world they live in. In that way, photography has taught me empathy. In many ways, the following images and stories are an expression of that journey.

I was sitting in my car one day watching tall trees bent by the Santa Ana winds sway toward the Pacific Ocean, overwhelmed by the task of organizing my photographs in a way that made sense for this book—something linear, even though my career has been anything but. I stared blankly at the palms and played back through a collage of images that seemed to blur, dazed by how full our planet is of wild landscapes and nature that looks impossible: Baobab trees and giraffes and fish with lightbulbs over their heads. Glaciers that look like frozen rivers and a perpetually curved horizon that always appears flat. A rhinoceros. An elephant. A pangolin. Humans. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to stand witness to so much of our world. Still, I had no idea how to arrange it all. And then I did.

By some unreasonable stroke of luck, I’ve photographed from Antarctica to the Arctic. My career has literally been bi-polar, an outward reflection of my inner extremes. And through its lessons in empathy, photography has connected me, and hopefully others, to the excruciatingly beautiful world we live in. Following that theme, I started looking at my pictures through the lens of emotional polarities.

There are many theories about the number of emotions humans experience and this is by no means a complete list. But as I dug through my work, there seemed to be some basal, recurring leitmotifs throughout the assignments—emotions that I felt as I learned the stories of others and made the pictures. The following are the major themes that emerged through the process:

Hope | Fear
Curiosity | Indifference
Pride | Shame
Awe | Contempt
Isolation | Camaraderie
Love

Every image in this book represents its emotional pole and both expressions are always present. We hope only in the presence of fear. We feel pride measured against shame. Isolation is only felt in the absence of closeness and camaraderie.

Only the final chapter, “Love,” is a singular construct and stands outside of duality. This kind of love doesn’t have a polarity; it is too big to be confined. In fact, I’m not sure it’s an emotion at all. I also accept that love so vastly often sits beyond our reach. That’s okay.

There are no introductions to the chapters aside from a brief definition of the emotions. If an image doesn’t resonate, decide where you’d put it. If you don’t feel anything when you see it, rip it out and throw it away! If it makes you feel deeply, tear it out and pin it on the wall. Don’t know what to feel? Sit with it. Have a glass of wine and pass the image around with your kids or at a dinner party. How do you find a needle in a haystack? You’ll know when you find it.

There’s an inherent messiness to this method of organizing a book. Every image can be felt a thousand different ways and just because I’ve slotted them into binaries doesn’t mean their meanings are black and white. Emotions aren’t. You’ll probably experience many of these images entirely differently than I do. In that way, it’s a “choose your own adventure” kind of book. It’s my invitation to dialogue about what we feel and why. And when you don’t know what to feel, choose love.

Story is the bedrock of humanity and art is its essential form of expression. We breathe story, and so, we breathe art. The utility of art itself is to tell stories that inform and move us to action through emotion. Photography has always been a way to anchor myself and others in moments, creating a chance to pause and ignite our hearts and minds. My greatest hope is that this book spurs conversation within yourself and with others about the ways the world moves you even when it hurts to look.

My other hope is that my work broadens the discussion around mental health, our brains, our hearts, and how we can reshape our challenges into our most creative endowments.