Manijeh Rahimi

Alone in a Crowd

Alone in a Crowd

There are different causes for loneliness; Life in big cities or industrial world in general is one of them. Living in big and crowded cities transforms our lives enormously. Our lives become fast, crowded, noisy, materialistic, and more singly today more than ever. One of the obvious consequences of these transformations is loneliness, a huge and largely unrecognized cultural failing. It is ironic that we live in a crowded environment yet many of us feel lonely and that sometimes, the presence of lots of people even reminds us of our isolation. It produces a sharp contrast between the possibility of being connected to others and the actuality of our separateness. Despite the negative effects of loneliness, it can barely be considered abnormal. Loneliness is a passive state. We may be connected to others physically but there is an emotional and mental disconnection. We are built for social contacts therefore there are serious—life-threatening—consequences when we don't get enough. People can feel lonely while they are never actually being alone.

Through my art installation I tried to find a way to mention to the passive feeling of loneliness that lies between conscious and subconscious in contrast with the crowded environment we live in. I used familiar objects as symbols of our modern world and portraits of normal people to point to the feeling that most of the time remains unfamiliar. I also recorded the environment’s noises of everywhere I took my portraits, mixed all the sounds, ended up with a single track and played it in the room that my panels were installed to trigger the feeling of contradiction.

These pictures below are some of the portraits of the installation, 9 from 64 portraits. 

Manijeh Rahimi