Jasper Johal
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Dark moods
🕑 Added 2021-09-06 05:57:09 +0000 UTCI shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
– from a poem by Sylvia Plath when she was 23 years old.
Some of the most beautiful art has emerged from tortured souls.
Life can be hard, but poetry provided an outlet for Sylvia Plath’s recurrent dark emotions. Until even poetry could not provide the solace she needed. After her husband left her, she fell into a depression she couldn’t emerge from. She took her own life, aged just 30.
Her brilliance came early, as did tragedy. A week and a half after her 8th birthday her father passed away, after going to hospital for diabetes related surgery. Also at age eight she published her first poem in the Boston Herald.
It is heartbreaking to think some of my favorite writers and poets, like Hemingway and Plath, exited this world too soon. They left behind much to be treasured.
PHOTO: Sabrina was a traveling model with a brooding, sensual quality to her. A mutual friend referred her to me. I loved the ink I could see in her previous photos, and agreed to do a shoot.
When I met her I noticed the tiny scars on her skin. We talked about the compulsions some of us live with, good and bad, and how they affect our life and relationships.
Working as a photographer, I have met a lot of people over the years. Like bartenders and barbers, we get to hear a lot of stories. It is about listening, not “fixing”. Simply listening without judging goes a long ways towards putting people at ease.
