The photography series ‘The Truth’ is a personal reflection on lockdown in London: with its subtle meetings with loneliness, death, and traces of human presence.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” wrote the French philosopher Blaise Pascal. We often find it hard to feel comfortable with ourselves; many find the burden of isolation unbearable.
There are places in London where every few days your neighbours disappear. In the apartment block facing mine, a young woman committed extended suicide, a family-annihilation, killing herself and her two sons. Afterwards, the burnt-out building decorated with waves of white roses, balloons, and handwritten notes, became memorial and egregore to the psychological impact of the pandemic. Every ninety minutes in the United Kingdom, someone loses their life to suicide.
Face to face with ourselves; who have we become in our secluded apartments? Our society atomised, living together but apart.
The pandemic cut through many of our existing ideas of what we value, and how we think about ourselves; who we are and who we are becoming.
We live through sudden, gut-wrenching changes, and a sense of foreboding invades familiar places. The emptiness of isolation becomes a mirror for the entire world. The reality, dream and fiction are mingling. We connect to the collective unconscious, our ancestral wisdom. Somewhere deep in our psyche we become whole, we cannot make our journey alone.
There is a hidden truth about all of us. The truth encoded in images and feelings: religious symbols, archetypes. Beyond time, we travel to realms of illusion and consciousness. We share dreams, nightmares, and The United States of Love.
This photo essay represents my diary of my Covid-19 journey into self. A progressive, timeless dream that intertwines with others in the dance of life and death.
About Monika K. Adler
Monika K. Adler is photographer and avant-garde filmmaker, based in London, known for her challenging and provocative photography and experimental films. She is currently working on her debut feature film SICK BACCHUS, which tells a story of pathological consumption amongst London’s wealthy elite.
Adler graduated from The European Academy of Photography and the Wojciech Gerson’s National School of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland.
Her works have been shown in hundreds of exhibitions, video art and film festivals internationally. These have included: Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, UK; House of the Parliament of the United Kingdom; Lagos Photo Festival 20: Home Museum; Photo London, Somerset House, London, UK; Rankin 2020, Sky Arts; Saint Germain Photo Festival, Paris, France; Gislaveds Konsthall, Sweden; The State Museum of Gulag, Moscow; West Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands; CICA Museum, Czong Institute of Contemporary Art, Korea; Museum of Image and Sound, Florianopolis, Brazil; Edinburgh International Festival, BBC 100 Women, London; etc.
Adler’s films and image-based works have been the subject of several academic studies and published in many magazines and publications. In November 2018 she was nominated to a Hundred Heroines – The Royal Photographic Society’s Award to honour one hundred photographic heroines. [Official Website]
