At the start of the semester, I wanted to create a larger-scale fashion editorial shoot that involved expansive landscapes and a team of creatives to help realise my vision. While the pandemic was still somewhat controlled, I had planned a shoot that I would’ve been able to execute in Melbourne, AU, and my home city Kuala Lumpur, MY. As the lockdown extended and increasing worries that I would not be able to shoot outdoors with a team in Melbourne, I had the option of returning to my home country to further my shoots (albeit with strict standard operating procedures). However, my decision to stay in Melbourne meant that I had to accept that I would be shooting at home: in an extremely confined space, with little to no props, and no help.
The concept ‘My Insecurities, Not Yours’ stems from an introspective look at my fall into a depressive, self-destructive state during the COVID-19 lockdown in Melbourne. As the lockdown halted my plans to create an outdoor editorial, I drew inspiration from shoots I had done in the past and incorporated my negative emotions into a body of work centred around myself. The concept is introspection into my emotions, fashion and self-care; it was a steep learning process in which I had to identify the emotions I felt throughout the lockdown and photograph everything by myself. Throughout this body of work, I experiment with vernacular and still-life photography combined with self-portraiture.
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” —Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami