Photographer Explores Own Bipolar Disorder through Hauntingly Beautiful Self-Portraits

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Photographer Maren Klemp artfully plumbs the depths of the human psyche, creating black-and-white self portraits to delve into what she describes as the “darker sides of the human mind.” Klemp was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2013, and her enigmatic work offers outward visual representations of the inner turmoil that can strike those with mental illness like her own.

Klemp partnered with American photographer and professor Dr. José Escobar to publish a book called Between Intervals, which tells the secret stories of mental health disorders through entrancing imagery. Her photographs shed soft light on struggles with sorrow and isolation, rendering mystical beauty from the tragic. In some, she appears to be taking flight or tumbling blindly through the unknown; in others, she’s shrouded in shifting fog and gauze, as if obscured from everyday reality.

Klemp explains that the pictures “tell about the lack of belonging, to live in a separate world that few or no others can enter or understand. It's about the fog that comes creeping, which overpowers and paralyzes, the invisible disease.” You can see some of the series below or its ongoing entirety on the artist’s website.

fine art photography, black and white photography, expressive photography, contemporary photography, art photography, dark photography, female art photography, art photography prints, met art photography, art photography women, girl art photography, maste

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the emerging

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Maren Klemp: Website | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
via [Fubiz]

All images via Maren Klemp.

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