Darker the night, brighter the stars

“To kill yourself, you have to love yourself a lot”

from “Les Justes” by Albert Camus.

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Committing suicide.

For many people, it’s taboo. Every one of us has thought about committing a self-destructive act at least once. For me, every death is merely a different way of committing suicide. 

Some people I knew killed themselves. Through this action, they have pointed out that dying is a right. It is a human, inalienable need.

Those who deliberately decide to die want to continue living and not surviving. The suicides yearn to regain the magic in their lives and to grasp a new feeling of enthusiasm in themselves. Suicide is the attempt to tumble gently down, like a soft fainting you need to wake up free again.

Recently, the view of an overpass brought back to my mind the memories of these fantastic people and many suicidal fellow artists.

A busy street and a bridge.

A road doesn’t offer a single route and doesn’t establish one single destination.

In this project, every image shows the different and unique points of view of these personalities, how they lived their lives and their intimate relation to this particular act of losing their physical body.

I perceived their feelings: anger, a sense of freedom, sadness, joy, triumph, resignation, loneliness, nostalgia, and melancholy.

But, most of all, a sense of urgency and the need to stop suffering.

Cars in the street run fast.

Our existences rush as cars. Or like ships on the sea that always leave their trails.

And if your life is becoming like a stormy sea into a night darker than ever, you can feel that the act of suicide can be a guide, the brighter star into this dark sky. It can lead you to the harbour and give you shelter.

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In loving memory of:

Jeanne Hébuterne ( age 21 )

Richard Gerstl ( age 25 )

Yukio Mishima ( age 45 )

Anne Sexton ( age 46 )

Diane Arbus ( age 48 )

Oskar ( brother  – age 60 )

Benedetto ( lover – age 73 )