Astronaut suicides
Written by duckrabbitI absolutely love this sequence of astronaut suicides by Neil DaCosta and art director Sara Phillips.
Funny but thoughtful too.
I get really sad when I think about all the photographers who spend years on half-baked photo projects that no-one really wants to see. This one was shot in two days. Food for thought?
(Pete Brook explains a lot more on the project at WIRED)
UPDATE:
Simon Crofts has made the following comments which are an important counterbalance to my post. Thanks Simon
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At the risk of being a killjoy, for me the series is just not funny. Suicide is just not an amusing topic. It seems that it’s supposed to be a humorous series, but it isn’t. What’s the point?
I could have coped with a couple of them. The astronaut on the toilet, followed by the toaster in the shower. Or the astronaut on the pavement from above. But too many of them, the graphic slit wrists in the shower with blood on the floor, head in the oven, and so on – they’re not witty and it becomes a methodology of suicide. The initial idea was fine. Execution – gone too far.
Maybe he should have taken a couple of years over the project and dug a bit deeper…
Author — duckrabbit
duckrabbit is a production company formed by radio producer/journalist Benjamin Chesterton and photographer David White. We specialize in digital storytelling.
Discussion (10 Comments)
At the risk of being a killjoy, for me the series is just not funny. Suicide is just not an amusing topic. It seems that it’s supposed to be a humorous series, but it isn’t. What’s the point?
Hi Simon,
Thanks for your comment.
I agree with you that suicide is not funny, but these are not pictures of someone committing suicide, nor do they seem to me to be poking fun at people who commit or attempt to commit suicide.
I can’t tell you what the photographers purpose was, but I think they can be read as a comment on the loss of doing something you love.
I could have coped with a couple of them. The astronaut on the toilet, followed by the toaster in the shower. Or the astronaut on the pavement from above. But too many of them, the graphic slit wrists in the shower with blood on the floor, head in the oven, and so on – they’re not witty and it becomes a methodology of suicide. The initial idea was fine. Execution – gone too far.
Maybe he should have taken a couple of years over the project and dug a bit deeper…
Hi Simon,
You make a very valid point and I will add your comments to the post.
Thanks for taking the trouble to express this.
Benjamin
Simon,
I don’t want to make this into an argument, as you obviously care deeply about the topic and articulate your points really well, but it was only about halfway through the sequence that I started to really read into the astronaut as a metaphor for how we go through the world and how that may be linked to suicide.
Beyond the obvious notion of death and space both being ‘the unknown’ it also seems to me that the emotions that, felt too intensely, drive some towards suicide are indeed the same emotions that can drive us towards great achievements.
There’s something really human about the series, that I didn’t get until I’d seen a few of them and quirk of the series had worn off.
For what it’s worth, and my personal experiences should in no way be considered as giving me authority or even any kind of claim on a subject matter, suicide is something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year. My brother died of an overdose a few months ago and we won’t know whether the cause of death was suicide or accident. I’m saying this to reassure that I’m aware this is a serious topic and one that needs careful treatment. But, in my humble opinion, this series says something fresh and thoughtful about the topic which, again only in my opinion, has to be better than the art school ‘trend’ of romanticising mental health issues.
Anyway, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts here, and hope my comments might give you another perspective on it, whether you agree with me or not.
simon:
with all due respect, i think that you just missed the point.
such a form of humour is quite common and has been extremely prevalent in society. its just dark humour, black comedy.
remember that?
the entire black adder series was based on such humor. monty python thrived on playing to this form.
its like when steven king says…”I like to tell people I have the heart of a small boy. Then I say it’s in a jar on my desk”
or when ben franklin quipped…”In order for three people to keep a secret, two must be dead”
and so on and so forth.
its not meant to be taken seriously!
i think it is brilliant, simple and extremely funny. in the same way that so much of monty python was funny!
so relax.
we are all ok.
asim
Asim, it was precisely the lack of humour – or at least, the asbence of wit – that was the problem in the pictures.
I’ve got nothing against black humour. I love Blackadder. One of my favourite cartoon books is the Bunny suicides series. They are witty and original – and sufficiently removed from direct reality to be amusing.
I was looking at a fashion series of photos a couple of days ago. They involved a fashion model, and a group of actors dressed as soldiers from Afghanistan lying around pretending to be dead and dying. There was no humour in it, it was just an inappropriate juxtaposition designed to shock, or amuse, it’s hard to tell which.
With the astronaut pictures, I liked the beginning of the series, it amused me for the first two pictures. Then it went too far and lost its wit. There is nothing dazzlingly humorous about someone with their head in an oven. Or with their wrists slashed. Or gassing themselves in a car. Once you’ve got the point in the first couple of pictures – that the astronaut wants to end it all because it’s the end of the shuttle programme – that has a flicker of humour, after that by repeating the death over and over again in different ways, it just demonstrates a kind of lack of maturity in humour. Like a bunch of overexcited 14 year olds who don’t know when to stop with a joke.
ST84Photo, I think I get what you’re saying about there being something human in the photos – the idea that ‘the astronaut is a person with feelings too’. But I think it’s undermined or overwhelmed by this methodology I mentioned – repeating the same core idea over and over, rather graphically, for no obvious reason.
At first, I saw the use of an astronaut as a gimmick, it was only after seeing a few frames that this gave way to thinking about the possible meaning of the astronaut and what that might represent as symbol in our world – the ideal of bravery mixed with intellect, the ideal of pursuing greatness, the ideal of exploring the unknown. Then, I linked those ‘ideals’ with the same tendencies that cause some to question the futility of existence.
I’m inclined to see the emotional/gut reason for keeping on and pushing for more being basically the same as the emotional/gut reason for wanting to obliterate everything.
I can only talk from my own position, and I may well (as a kind friend pointing out backchannel to me after I showed them this series) be reading more into this series than the artists intended. But, when your back is against the wall, you make a choice and I think that suicide is a clear case of “flight or fight” where we probably wont ever have any full explanation beyond :some people choose X and some choose Y”. Maybe that says more about me, I have been through some very stressful situations and I didn’t come from a privileged background. I’m genuinely perplexed about why I flourished and others around me didn’t. It fascinates me. I wish I could instil the same mindframe in my peers. I just know I don’t give up. I wish I could say the same for my brother. But I have a feeling that we were thinking and reacting from a very similar place.
That’s what is interesting visually, for me, here. That in these images, the astronaut symbolically represents both the “best” and “worst” of what we can be.
What duckrabbit referred to as “humous” I think of as “black humour” as noted by Asim above and, perhaps slightly more accurately as basically the slight absurdity of seeing someone in an astronaut costume enact these scenes.
Still, I’ve seen more than a few photoessays about suicide where a person is depicted self-harming and, too frequently, it feels forced and like the photographer is trying to be edgy and “deep” by romanticising what is both a very human and very heart-wrenching mindframe to be in. I generally feel like those photographers don’t undertand despair at all. It feels superficial to me.
Here, and I may be mistaken by the artists’ intentions, but it feels like they’ve engaged enough to put to one side the traditional routes and have instead offered us a fresh way of visualising the issue, and one that points to some interesting consideration about the possible causes for it.
Again, just want to repeat that I don’t wish to force my view on anyone here or discredit others – I am no expert, I can only write what I feel and think and that may well be completely wrong.
Some things matter more than just being right. Here, I’m just trying to be clear about where I’m coming from. Notions of being right are for others to decide. So I hope we’re good and that I haven’t offended you but have added something to my earlier comments. One luv.
Typos aside (I shouldn’t post on the internet before bed…)
I just feel that this is a really big and complex, complicated, and difficult to understand (perplexing) to anyone who hasn’t actually been through it (and I’m one of those who hasn’t) issues.
And I just feel that those who photograph it in a graphically documentary style feel to me like they’re missing the point of it entirely. They’re missing the issues. And it feels disingenuous.
Now, playing devil’s advocate, maybe I just feel guilty that I’ve been around suicides and been unable to help. But I don’t think that’s it. I could be wrong on that call, but I feel like physical and emotional access can be two totally different things and that photographers can and do too frequently conflate the two.
The refreshing thing for me about this series was that I viewed it as well made photography that looked quirky, and then I engaged deeply with the issues and questions it raised. And the images stayed with me, and added to my mental framework about this.
But, like I say, I don’t claim to be any kind of expert or authority on this subject. I’ve spent far too many quiet nights staring down questions I can’t ever answer to know that it’s much better to fail this exam than to pass it with bullshit. You know? Like, I just have to accept my own limitations with figuring this out. And just speak honestly about it. And let everything else work itself out however it does and reflect on that. Sometimes, you just have to throw your hands up and say “I’m either not smart enough or stupid enough to ever know the answer to that, but I don’t know which of those two I am” and leave it at that. That’s how I feel about this.
Basically, I’d like to give the artists’ as much benefit of the doubt as the rest of for not really having a clue what they’re dealing with when it comes to this. That said, I think they’ve added something interesting and not-glib to it.
Humbly,
Sara