Page 78 - Demo

Humans have suffered terrible pain and agony since the very beginning. But the worst we endure is all too often selfinflicted, either by ourselves or by our peers. I have photographed many young women who seem to suffer the strange contemporary sickness of self-cutting. Many of them realise it is an illness and actively try to seek help, but then there are others who possibly delude themselves into thinking they are reshaping their bodies! Why do they do it? They tell me they suffer periods of acute numbness and the shock of hurting themselves somehow aids them with staying in contact with reality and physical presence. As for infliction of pain on each other, religion and war seems to have made the greatest contribution to the wholesale abuse, torture, and rape of women. And it still goes on today in all parts of the world. It is not an activity cast into our brutal past, but something which is alive and thriving in the 21st century. I think maybe, collectively, humankind is insane! MOL