People: Portrait (PROFESSIONAL) - HONORABLE MENTION
Bipolar 1 With A Gun

Photo © Paula Dixon
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This self portrait series, entitled 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. Viewers may recognize in themselves the rage, panic, loneliness or confusion that can make anyone go insane, if just for a moment. For the mentally ill and everyone else, guns turn uncontrollable thought into fatal action. The true insanity is that we continue to let it happen.
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This self portrait series, entitled 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. Viewers may recognize in themselves the rage, panic, loneliness or confusion that can make anyone go insane, if just for a moment. For the mentally ill and everyone else, guns turn uncontrollable thought into fatal action. The true insanity is that we continue to let it happen.
About author:
Paula Dixon is a Los Angeles-based fine art photographer and graduate of both the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television and the Spéos Institute of Photography in Paris. Her work has won several 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 shows like Saturday Night Live. Her photographs, including self portraits, are shot with manual focus, shutter speed and aperture; they are never spot-corrected or Photoshopped, since Ms. Dixon believes that the true art of photography remains solely in one’s ability to write a compelling story with light.BACK TO GALLERY