honorable mention
Paula Dixon united states
title
Bipolar 1 With A Gun
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entry description
This self portrait series, Bipolar 1 With A Gun, puts a real firearm in the hands of a 'crazy' person - the photographer herself - to portray the dangerous internal struggle of mental illness meeting with an external catalyst, a legally-purchased gun. These one to three second exposures were shot in the photographer's home, where she has successfully hidden her battle with Bipolar 1 with Psychosis from nearly everyone for years. This work is not a condemnation of the mentally ill, but rather a personal exposé intended as a reminder that one can never know what's going on in another's mind. For the mentally ill, and for anyone in a moment of frenzy, guns turn uncontrollable thought into fatal action. The true insanity is that we continue to let it happen.about the photographer
Paula Dixon is a Los Angeles-based fine art photographer and graduate of the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and the Spéos Institute of Photography in Paris. Her work has won eighteen international awards and been shown at the Arles Open, the Whitney Biennial, and several regional galleries. Before she began a career in photography, Ms. Dixon got perfect SAT scores, did manual labor flipping houses, played professional poker in casinos and Hollywood home games, and wrote for television comedy shows like “Saturday Night Live.”back to gallery
