Hannah Schneider

Companion Pieces

This series explores the daily struggles of living with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Each image utilizes the visual element of hands reaching towards the subject as a manifestation of anxious thoughts, feelings, and resulting behaviors.

For many with GAD, the movement of hands can be a side effect of living with the disorder and may be both conscious or subconscious, with examples of the movement including shaking, trembling, or clenching, or picking at one’s skin or nails to self-soothe. During the day, one’s tolerance to their anxiety may vary, experiencing periods of time where they are extremely vulnerable to their anxious thoughts and other periods where they are tolerable or resistant to their anxiety. In the images, the amount of brightness around the subject and the distance between the subject and the hands represent the level of tolerance, with the series displaying the range of anxiety one can feel through the spectrum of the hands’ distance and the brightness of the light. Vignettes were utilized to achieve this effect, and each hand’s blending mode was altered so that they were ghost-like to symbolize their visibility being constrained to the individual with anxiety. Additionally, the darkness of each image represents how confined and isolated one can feel when living with anxiety, and the subject in the images is variably posed to showcase various positions adopted during times of vulnerability. After viewing the series, I hope the viewer understands a little more about what it is like to live with anxiety, or, if living with it personally, feel represented in the images. Also, I hope the viewer becomes more empathetic towards those with anxiety and perceptive of the daily struggles they live with, regardless of the “invisibility” of GAD.