Marcel is a chemical engineer and photographer, there is nothing still in his still life work, everything has movement as it is being photographed. Everything moves, jumps, swirls and swishes, like a memorable single-frame film. His ink photographs look so powerful and strong, it can easily be visualised to represent a mental illness. With two colours blending into each other, this can be represented for bipolar illnesses where they possibly experience two different personalities and cant settle into one, struggling with who they really are. Others are light and bright which can express happiness and seeing clearly in life, brightness taking you down a positive path. The red cloud of colour can represent lust or love, signifying the power of love and how it can take control of your mind and heart. Red can also be represented as anger and the overpowering levels of anger we possess in our minds over situations. The inks contain so much detail and layers of depth that they portray the emotion in people's minds while suffering from mental health conditions, they portray movement and stability at the same time. The figures of the ink also represent the human figure and and the position of their bodies, for example the red looks big, strong and empowering, like a strong figure looking down on you, talking down to you. The green and blue bursts of ink symbolise the closeness of two figures, a strong relationship but thats quite deep and troubled by the depth of the colours.
Each photograph Marcel has produced tells a story, each person will probably perceive it differently but this is the type of work I want to recreate in my finals for this project. I want to understand depression and BPD and be able to represent them through shapes and colours to symbolise the moods and emotions of the mental conditions.
