The asylum… The Room… I remember the doorknobs more than anything. The nurse would enter and exit the Room and take the doorknob with her. I have replayed this scene hundreds of times. I am fifteen years old. When I cross the threshold of this building, accompanied by my sister, the first thing the doctor tells me is, ‘the symptom of good health is a normal sound sleep. How did you sleep today?’ This is the time, after many sleepless nights, when I don’t want to wake up. I’ve considered myself normal but sometimes I can’t fall asleep. And the body crumbles like an old piece of bread. And then… the Room. The fog. Howling voices, cutting across the hallway of the mental ward. Here I am. Without a clue how I used not to be. It is very small - two doors, a bench in between and a narrow pit opening of the window with yellow-painted bars by the ceiling. I am on the bench, waiting. The doors are locked from outside. I watch the window. The light changes slightly when the wind touches trees outside. I think of a sun in the shape of my parents. I have to force my body to love them despite all of That. And I can’t. How did I get here? Why aren’t my parents here for me? The stain of my face flashes: for one – please, look at me, - there is another – please, do not. What happens afterwards? The deadened details of the past have been magically erased. There are only flashbacks - the fog that couldn’t help itself. Insomnia, depression and anxiety are dog-eared friends that follow around, turning, restless to lie down. They chase you into water and you are almost drowning in a garbled flotsam pillaged here and there. Almost. But it might be just the dogs. The photographs from these series, after all, may give some idea of the thing from outside. The nights - recurrences portioned out of the water, as gods, but dressed as the beggars are huddled against the gate of a garden - to which they can never be admitted. This is what I was born to, not so much to the sunlight. Stanza by stanza into the world, singing, as best as one can - sadder, perhaps, I am bowing to the powerlessness in the face of it all.
Marina Black is a Russian born Canadian photographer. Her work focuses on the subjects of mortality & anguish, beauty & abjectness of the human body, identity & memory. Her work has been published in Eyemazing Susan Vol.II, curated by Susan Zadeh; FOSSILS OF LIGHT + TIME, curated by Elizabeth Avedon, an editor of L’Oeil de la Photographie; and BURN, 1st edition, curated by a Magnum photographer David Alan Harvey. Black’s photographs has been shown in solo & group exhibitions worldwide and are included in public and private collections. She is represented by Galerie VU', Paris, France
