What To Do With A Broken Heart

© Emanuele Moi - This image together with the next one of the dead bird touches the theme of suicide ideation and the call of the void. © Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project © Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project View all images ↓
View all images ↓
  • Dates
    2021 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Contemporary Issues, Fine Art
  • Location United Kingdom, United Kingdom

'What to do with a broken heart' explores strategies for the management of negative emotions in the context of learnt mechanisms of emotional repression in male individuals.

The emotional education of male individuals often consists of mechanisms of detachment from strong feelings and repression. They are rarely taught what to do especially with negative emotions, how to handle them in a healthy manner.

This can result in displacement and redirection towards violent behaviours as ways of expressing and processing traumas and mental struggles.

The project deals in particular instances of self-destructive and self-harming inclinations as coping mechanisms and psychological responses.

The title refers to a 'broken heart' as a condition of general damage, loss or grief, rather than the result of the end of a relationship, although that can scar the psyche too, especially in case of betrayed trust and be the trigger for unhealthy behaviours.

My hope for this ongoing project is to create a personal narrative than can tackle both my individual experience and the general struggle that similar people can and do experience. A textual element is also relevant in this body of work.

© Emanuele Moi - This image together with the next one of the dead bird touches the theme of suicide ideation and the call of the void.
i

This image together with the next one of the dead bird touches the theme of suicide ideation and the call of the void.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This image paired with the previous one of the cliff and seashore of South England, explore the idea of suicidal thoughts and giving in to the call of the void.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This image and the next one create a 'Diptych on Regret' around relapsing and re-enacting old negative behaviours as a place of comfort although unhealthy. The consequences are evident only in the aftermath when lucidity comes back.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This image and the previous one create a 'Diptych on Regret' around relapsing and re-enacting old negative behaviours as a place of comfort although unhealthy. The consequences are evident only in the aftermath when lucidity comes back. Writing down thoughts is a constructive way to analyse and understand our own coping tactics.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This image is titled "Lovers//Fool" and plays on the idea of the risk of letting one's own wellbeing rely on somebody else and the possibility of damage if that trust is betrayed and that dependency cannot be sustained. Tarots and fortune-telling are also ways to deal with the unpredictability of life and try to find comfort in knowing that not everything is in our power to change. At the end of the day everything is a gamble though, everything comes down like a house of card (love, fortune, future) and we need to deal with the rubble.

© Emanuele Moi - This is a note that is somehow about intergenerational damage and the inheritance of emotional incompetence
i

This is a note that is somehow about intergenerational damage and the inheritance of emotional incompetence

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

Destructive behaviours are forms of processing emotions. The damaged self (but also Other) can be damaged and scarred over and over in the search of comfort.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This is a photograph of Virginia Woolf's bed in her last residence of Monk's House in Rodmell. I have always felt a personal connection to Virginia Woolf and her struggles. I think it is relevant that she was a woman and I can identify with her on an emotional level especially with her gravitation towards death.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This is a photograph of the River Ouse where Virginia Woolf took her own life by drowning, walking in the water with her coat's pockets filled with rocks. This is her place of rest where her resolution finally caught up with her struggles.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

This is a note about realising relapsing into bad habits feels comforting but does not have any positive results as evident when lucidity strikes back.

© Emanuele Moi - This is an image about trying and reaching out from a place of alienation and mostly failing.
i

This is an image about trying and reaching out from a place of alienation and mostly failing.

© Emanuele Moi - Image from the What To Do With A Broken Heart photography project
i

'What's after landing?' Sometimes it feels like we have been sent out in the world with no instruction. Told to avoid stuff but then the stuff catches up with us and we have no training on how to behave. 'What are we to do with a broken heart?'

© Emanuele Moi - 'F*CKING WASTE OF SPACE' I have always hated my birthdays.
i

'F*CKING WASTE OF SPACE' I have always hated my birthdays.