For years, I used photography to survive depression. Not to fix it. Not to explain it.
Just to get through it.
I found myself connecting to things otherwise missed.
Small things. Quiet things.
The kind that don’t really register as significant in the moment, but they are.
A bike ride, bird song,
breeze through an open window,
the weight of a book or the smell of coffee.
Nothing that would “solve” anything, but somehow, they were enough to hold onto.
Things that found a way to keep my going, knowingly or not.
Unknown to me at the time, while going through severe periods of difficult mental health I was experiencing small moments of joy…I just couldn’t fully process or hold onto them . I did not have the words, or mental capacity to keep them in the moment but they felt significant. I decided to start capturing them through photography. The photographs gave me the time I needed to process, reflect and acknowledge these moments, allowing me to exist within them.
I found a way to keep myself.
Over time, I began to question if these moments weren’t unique to me.
Are just not spoken about? Forgotten?
Do they sit in the background of more visible, abrasive conversations about mental health just too small, too subtle yet too hard to articulate?
What Keeps Us comes from this place.
To challenge the perception of what Joy is and how it can be felt.
I want to create an exhibition that doesn’t just explore what kept me when my mental health was at it’s lowest, but something that invites others to reflect on the same and share their experiences. I want to create a tapestry of the overlooked, the little things, that keep us.
What Keeps us is a participatory photography project that explores the small, often overlooked moments that help people keep going.
Building a patchwork of the in-between.
The things that don’t fix everything,
but matter anyway.
Because I'm not the only one who's been kept going by something small.
What keeps you?
I’m inviting you to share the small moments that have kept you keep going.
It could be something simple:
A routine
A place
A sound
A thing
Observations
A feeling you return to
You can share this in whatever way feels most comfortable:
A voice note
Written words
A sound recording (birds, music, silence , anything that resonates)
A photograph from a moment that mattered
It doesn’t need to be fully formed.
It can be as small as a sentence, word or even just a fragment.
What will happen to your contribution?
Your contribution will help shape the direction of What Keeps Us , an ongoing photography project that will develop into an exhibition.
Some contributions may be included in the work in anonymised or carefully framed ways, while others will inform the visual language and development of the project.
You can choose how your contribution is used, and whether you would like to remain anonymous, I’ll never share anything I don’t have permission to.
There is no pressure to share more than you want to.