The Magic Frame: Urban Madness

Some of you may have noticed some time back that I made five edits, as a part of Robyn’s One-Four Challenge.

There is actually a sixth one, which I have not put up on WordPress. I call this, sixth, one “Urban Madness- Innocence Lost”. This last one is a composite of three images, and which is intended to depict the unfortunate result of much of the madness that is often related with too much alcohol.

The sixth instalment is, in part, inspired by the sad tale of a lady called Jyoti Singh who was brutally raped a few years ago, and who was called “Nirbhaya” or “Fearless” by the nation. Her rape captured the angst of the nation. Sadly, the youngest of the four rapists was a minor at the time, and was set free recently.

Women continue to be raped, as do little children. But, this post is not about rape.

The photograph, as I did mention, was one that was taken by accident. However, it is the only one that I liked from that shoot.

When I started to edit the photographs, and as I got into the challenge, it turned from being a fun exercise to a more psychological one. I tried, in my own way, to capture the various moods that alcohol can induce in a person. The mood can move from sombre, to mellow, to one where you feel the electricity coursing through your veins; to one where the alcohol, the company, and the lights create an altogether more psychedelic mood.

Finally, the mood can be sinister, and when this happens the results can be somewhat disastrous, as we all know.

This exercise, inspired by Robyn’s challenge, was my first move into the more psychological aspects, or interpretation, of photography.

Ultimately, photography is about storytelling, and if you can manage to rise beyond technicalities and tell your story then you have won the battle.

It is also a journey, and the journey is often an internal one. As you grow and mature, then this story can manifest itself in ways that are quite accurate visually.

Urban Madness is, ultimately, about the madness and false sense of power that sometimes overtakes us when we allow something else to control us.