“There are butterflies whose wings have been ripped off before they got a chance to grow. Such butterflies will either die because they cannot exist without wings, or they will learn to fly without wings.”

From my book “The Girl With A Crown Of Shame”,
Part I. Tearing of the wings of an as yet unhatched butterfly

Project „Searching For The Broken The Self“ is returning back to the earlier stages of personal development (Psychosocial Theory Erikson´s Model stages 1-5, Erikson 1963) and explores how the incomplete-incorrect-pathological course of these stages influences our further life and searching for „the self“ and identity. This project further continues in my own „the self study“ which began with the project Maternal Exile (2015-2020, Personal Diary, Self-Documentary). Project „Searching For The Broken The Self“ describes how I have started to look/search for myself and identity after I recognized how my pathological childhood and prenatal period have influenced my whole life, including the absence of finding identity and „who I am“ during adolescence (Erikson´s stage 5 of psychosocial development). I also confront in the project the term „badly born children“ and open the task whether even „badly born“ child has a chance to live happily ever after. For this Project, I returned once again to my hometown to take pictures of melting ice on water dam with its structure which represents something broken in the past, but with the structure of the past growing in the personality into the present. The Project will be a part of the unpublished essay for my study of „Therapeutic Photography“ postgradual program at Robert Gordon University in Scotland.

„With this project I wanted to open the discourse about how is „the self“ influenced for the subsequent stages of life when the person does not undergo through initial stages of psychosocial development properly. I also wanted to open the discourse about non-judgmental attitude to each other, because nobody knows what the other person went through and what was his starting line.“