The Crying Experience V - the end

About Procrastination

I have procrastinated writing this blog post for over 9 months. Sometimes, people prefer to have loose ends, but for me, I can’t forgive myself when I don’t finish certain things. Especially with a series I cared so much for last year. I can justify my procrastination as “art shouldn’t be rushed”, but at the same time I was trying to write something extraordinary and I knew I wasn’t able to because I’m not a writer. In addition to the fact that I’m not a writer, I am not a native English speaker: I feel discouraged to convey my thoughts sometimes, I fear that all of the words I wrote are not accurate enough to express my ideas, and I fear that people would laugh at the grammar mistakes I couldn’t notice.

Despite all of the noises inside my head, I have decided to finish it. It’s going to be a good end and good start for me.

About the Process

I would like to go back to the very beginning of this project. It started with the intention of not wanting to take pictures that were just beautiful on a surface level, and I decided to choose crying as a subject to photograph because I personally thought I have a deep connection with this emotion. My process of each shoot was very similar: once I decided to do a shoot with a model we would meet in person and brainstorm some ideas. We needed to brainstorm because I designed 2 parts for the shoot, one for the editorial part, and one for the crying part. The editorial part is inspired by the models’ spiritual beings or something related to what they like. It was meant to bring out the beautiful, artistic, and spiritual image of the model, so that there would be a big contrast with the crying part, where they would take off all of their makeup and talk about any experience they were willing to while I tried to capture pictures of them crying.

What I would like to share is that the crying parts were all very organic. I sat with my model on the floor, we had a studio light on, and we started to talk about random topics. We usually would start with the general background, it was not like a one-sided interview, I would talk about my stories and experience as well. I could almost call this a therapy session with a photography flair, which is why I wasn’t able to continue with it anymore as I’m not a professionally trained therapist. I felt that I wasn’t able to let go of the sadness and negativities from other people completely.

About Meryl

Meryl was my last model of the series. She was a talented young actress and student at Northeastern University. Just like any other models, I met her at some photography meetup. I don’t go to those much these days but back in 2017 and 2018 it was something I would spend time to do.

Meryl was exceptional, she had this natural confidence but in a very humble way. I worked with her once before we had this shoot, and when she was posing, her moves were bold, innovative and smooth. When she told me that she was interested in doing the crying experience with me I was very psyched because I was excited to see what she could offer. During our brainstorming session, she said she would want the editorial part to be about lights, because she performed a lot, and the lights reminded her of the stage. The mental image of the editorial shoot came to me very quickly right after she gave me the direction to use colorful lights. She suggested the lights that a DJ would use, but I wanted to try out Gel Lighting photography because I can simply change the color of the lights with the color gels. I watched a Youtube Tutorial and it was really helpful. I am not going to lie that I actually knew how to use color gels beforehand, the process of preparing the crying experience shoot always involved a lot of learning and that’s why I liked it so much.

For makeup, I asked Najeema to use lots of body glitter this time, so it would give reflections when the light hits, and I thought this could be associated with the glamorous vibe on stage. My mind stuck on a frizzly hair for Meryl for some reason, I just thought it would be more fun to have her wear that kind of hair-do. But it would be very time consuming if we actually curl her hair on the day of shooting, instead of torturing ourselves to prepare this shoot for another 4 hours, I purchased a wig. It worked out so well and it looked just like Meryl’s real hair, since she’s blonde anyways.

 About the crying experience

While the editorial part could be all expressed in the photography, the crying part deserves some writing. I think memory fragments are not to be relied on, we all should record our lives in some ways if we hope to remember our lives as we grow older. And here I am, writing about the conversation Meryl and I had 10 months ago. Perhaps most of the dialogues becomes a blur in my head, but I still clearly remember the emotions she expressed to me.

Meryl cried at the very beginning of the shoot, almost as if she was using her acting skill. She explained to me that she could trigger crying on stage through an uncomfortable feeling in her throat, like a ‘tick’. It’s certainly a useful skill if you want to become a great actress, but also to allow yourself an emotional release from great stress or hardship. I often remember that I had difficulty crying when I encounter extremely sad things, like when my best friend Chloe passed with Osteosarcoma. I had a job interview that day, and I knew that I absolutely couldn’t cry that morning. Not only that morning, but I actually didn’t cry until I saw her urn later when I visited home. I think being able to cry, to cry without helping, is great. Because I do believe when you cry, your tears carry something out of you, that lessen your grief a little bit. Crying is healing to me.

However, Meryl told me her tears were real: those were the tears she shed every time when she started remembering when her mom had breast cancer. Although Meryl’s mother beat the disease, this memory always made her sad. I think it’s totally understandable, I remember how distraught I was when I had to see my mom post-surgery, even though the surgery was successful. The time we spent on worrying definitely scarred us. Are we supposed to simply forget about the time when we were anxious and stressed out? Perhaps we want to but it is never an easy thing to do.

She was telling me about a play she was in where she played a character with a terminal illness and died every time on stage, she cried and thought of her mom and lots of other horrible memories. Is it healthy to cling onto these negative memories? I’d say it depends on your perspective. I think when you are able to see them as a normal part of your life and use them to release your grief, or revisit them simply because they are bad so that you can be reminded of the good things. I think that’s totally fine. I don’t think memory is more hurtful than an abusive present or future. I think the past is what gives us wisdom, and is something to be treasured.

In the end I want to talk about other things that make me cry. Like the Alabama abortion ban, like the stories of the “me too” movement and etc. Female body becomes so fragile when it faces the strong male one. Not only have males been the dominant sex in terms of physicality, but also the dominant one in social mentality. We all live under a misogynistic society and we are all nurtured and influenced by misogyny. It is when we want to be better by wearing pants, it is when we start to bitch about the female manager for being overly dramatic, it is when we start to think pink and barbies are lame, it is when we attack the people who embody the female stereotype but not try to understand them, it is when we think we are so much better when we are accepted by more white men at work.

It is a nightmare we are embracing without noticing.

And these things make me cry, and these things deserve us to cry about.

Thank you

I want to thank all of the models who worked with me and cried in front me or with me. And I want to especially thank Najeema for helping me with these magical makeups, they played a big part in the series. I also would like to thank all of the friends that helped me setup my birthday/gallery party last August for this series, it was still the best birthday I’ve ever had.

Until next time.

The Crying Experience IV

It’s been a little bit over a month since I did my 4th Crying Experience. Everything Heather said still seems very vivid to me and I remember how nervous she was throughout the session. As for me, I was quite nervous about writing her story, because Heather writes beautiful poems and to write about her seemed intimidating as I was afraid I would fail to represent her.

Heather came to me with a very big interest in my recording of the human’s emotion. She genuinely expressed how much she liked this idea and we talked a little bit about what she wanted and her background. When she told me, she studied poetry in college as her major, I felt that this girl came from another world, the world that values spiritual being the highest, and with beings that do not need to survive the mundane needs of my own cruel reality. I added her on Facebook, and read some of the poems she wrote. They are full of stories, even like movie clips when you read them, you can see, you can smell, you can feel in between words.

Heather was not sure if she would be able to cry in front of the camera, but she really wanted to go through the experience. For me, I wanted to feel her emotion not only from her poems but also from her story, and I could sense that she needed this, so I decided to make some art with her.

About the Editorial Look

After some back and forth discussion, we settled on a butterfly themed image because Heather loved bugs, in fact her Instagram handle is called “Hettybug”. I also asked her to send me some pictures for makeup inspiration, and I happened to like the ones with colorful eyeshadow a lot.

With the magical hands of our beloved genius-Najeema, we transformed Heather into a butterfly fairy. Orange butterfly hair clips on her natural fluffy hair, colorful eyeshadows in hot pink, orange, gold and turquoise dotting on her eyelids and some lovely freckles sprinkling on her face.

Besides putting a wonderful makeup on Heather, Najeema also brought me some props-some plastic butterfly to stick on the backdrop. Part of the shoot was very difficult as the butterflies kept falling off from the fabric but Najeema tried using my fridge magnets to stabilize them since the butterflies had magnets on and it worked a lot better.

It was not the easiest session, because I had to direct Heather and fix the butterflies in the background. I sensed Heather was a bit nervous throughout the course, but I thought perhaps it was just because she was new to studio shoots. Later, I learned that her nerves were due to the story she was waiting to tell.

We also tried to photograph with a vintage mirror, and I asked Heather to write a short sentence of her poem on the mirror. She wrote “I love your orange laughter-like honeybell”, a quote from Pablo Neruda that inspired her poem.

About Heather

One of the reasons that we did pictures with the mirror was that mirror has a very important meaning for Heather. She told me mirror made her feel safe, because it confirmed her existence in the world. She would look at any mirror of her convenience, and it gave her comfort every time she saw herself.

This is not a story about a girl of vanity, but about a girl who experienced near-death twice and she was constantly anxious about her own existence.

When Heather was younger, she once met an aggressive dog, and it ripped her lower lip off. She remembered there was a lot of blood and pain. She was sent to the hospital but her parents were not informed immediately because she was at the babysitter’s when she was injured, and at that time she felt terribly alone. She was worried that she might pass, and as a young kid she was worried that she would not be able to say goodbye to her family before she passed. Later on, her parents came as soon as they heard the news. Luckily, after about 60 stitches she was stabilized, but this experience traumatized her.

As she grew older, she went to college and started working. She loved biking. There was a day she was riding her bike just like any other day to work, the sun was shining bright, the sky was blue, everything just seemed perfectly normal. All of a sudden, she saw a big truck and noticed that the truck driver was not paying attention to the road, or perhaps she was at a blind spot that the driver could not see her. The next second she was on the ground, heavily hit, by this truck that weighed couple of tons. Even worse, the driver did not notice he hit someone, he kept driving, and Heather was dragged for 10 seconds… 15 seconds… She was desperate and in her most terrified state that I couldn’t begin to imagine, she started screaming as loud as she could to get help. Finally, the truck stopped, and passengers came and helped. Struck by immense pain, she was thinking that might be the last day of her life. She thought, “Why would I die in this fashion, why did it have to be me?”

That night, at the ER, she talked to the reaper and came back. She made it. Again, her parents did not know about the accident immediately on that very night. She felt alone, again, but she also felt guilty, she felt like she should not bother her parents about it. I wonder, how did that feel? I would not know. A mix of deep sadness and loneliness, and a gloss of anxiety and questioning of her self-worth. Am I still real? Do I still exist? What just happened? Why am I still alive? Perhaps she was having a million of questions in her head – I can only guess.

“Live everyday as if it’s your last”, this sounds very melodramatic to people like us, but to Heather, it is very relatable now. She was not sure if she would be able to walk anymore but after a lot of physical therapy, she started walking again. There’s something she would not do anymore - riding a bike. It’s inevitable that she experiences fear and anxiety when she’s crossing the street now, but thankfully she’s healthy and walking, not in a wheelchair or non-existence. She radiates, with her beautiful poems, and her sweet smile. Like she wrote, she has that “orange laughter-like honeybell”.

In the End

Heather told me she still did not understand why these tragic experiences happened to her, she questioned if she was chosen for bad luck. I honestly told her that she definitely had better luck than others, because she was still breathing and able to take in every single bit of beauty of life. Perhaps, she was meant to experience a little bit more to feel more alive and understand life a little deeper.

Life is a myth, but we should enjoy it while we can because we will be dead for a long time.