Mr. Lonely Photo Project

This project below was a long term photography project in which we were told to take photos based on a song of our choosing. I chose Tyler, The Creator’s 911/Mr. Lonely and based the emotions expressed through some key lyrical points within the song for the photos taken for this project.

I felt that the mask represented more of a human face than a possible stand in friend or even myself would, so the star of this project, Mr. Lonely, is the main mask. Meanwhile, a more feminine person is represented through the half mask. In my project, Mr. Lonely is an obsessive stalker character that feels threatening while acknowledging his false sense of confidence through his own performances. He represents no one person in my life, but a collection of several failed connections to people.

The vague threat of calling 911 for continued communication under the guise of love is a form of abuse as well as an invitation to help the feminine mask. He blames this loneliness on not being able to connect to people despite surrounding himself with many friends and being the loudest one in the room. True connections feel so much more personal to me when it is a one on one situation instead of a group, like a phone conversation, and having someone talk to you as close as they can to your face through a phone feels strange when their intentions may be sinister or harmful.

I find that loneliness is a prevalent complaint with people, as they feel a certain dissatisfaction with their current situation and choose a form of escapism in order to feel better, however, my works will tend to focus on the negative aspects of this. What interested me the most about this project, as many of my projects do, is the psychological affect this work has with different audiences, similar to that of a movie.