Naomi Kaley is a graphic designer from Porvorim, Goa. She enjoys cooking and baking new recipes once in a while and binge-watching TV shows over the weekends. She loves exploring emotions and expressing her state of mind through experimental photography, more towards self expressionism.
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Instagram Handle: naomikaley_
Behance: Experimental Photobook
I’ve spent a lot of my teenage years in isolation though I was surrounded by my family perhaps, because of my introverted nature or not being able to cope up with my peers in social situations. If I had a rough day at school or faced an awkward situation, I’d come back home and scribble away those angry thoughts into my diary or argue with myself on how I had just walked away feeling useless and wishing I had stood up for myself.
It would also often lead me into daydreaming or lucid dreaming at times. Although I may not have known what maladaptive dreaming or lucid dreaming was about, just the experience of escaping from reality was weirdly fascinating. It did make me question my life and how it feels to dream of a perfect life that doesn’t exist. Loneliness can also result in creating one’s world of happiness to fill the void.
Gradually, over the years, as I entered college, I had become more self-aware of my insecurities, and all the more, I questioned my need to escape reality. From what was I running away? What is this feeling that I am trying to avoid? How does one deal with rejections and failures? I wanted to embrace my mistakes and find solace in something that I didn’t find elsewhere. As far as I knew, this had internally made it very difficult for me and affected my self-esteem because of fear of confrontation and lack of confidence.
I wanted to let go of perfection and discover my inner self and express my thoughts out. So I started to photograph my emotions in which I drown and infuse myself, and as a result, it gives me the feeling that I am expressing my state of mind in each photo. And I realised photography helped me connect with my emotions. To me, art is finding love in the mistakes and creating emotions out of them.
A lot of them have asked me the reason behind clicking blurry photos. I have been trying to search for an answer myself - probably for a long time. I believe everything is beautiful the way it is, and a part of me tries hard in defining what is perfect and what is not. Perhaps I was too lost in the realm of creating a memory that would define my happiness. Or maybe not. The feeling is strange in a way and that I may not be able to explain ever. But to put it succinctly it is more a journey of discovering my inner thoughts, and the photos I have taken have now been my diary, mirror where I vent myself out or how things reflect around me and the way I feel. Strangely these photos have also helped me appreciate my mental and emotional state of mind.
I want my audience to reflect on their thoughts and experiences, desires and see beauty in things that do not need to be defined, how much ever raw it may be, it is still beautiful.
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