Phobia:
An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something.
A phobia is an overwhelming and debilitating fear of an object, place, situation, feeling or animal.
Phobias are more pronounced than fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger about a situation or object.
If a phobia becomes very severe, a person may organise their life around avoiding the thing that's causing them anxiety. As well as restricting their day-to-day life, it can also cause a lot of distress.
Fear:
An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.
Fear is one of the most basic human emotions. It is programmed into the nervous system and works like an instinct. From the time we're infants, we are equipped with the survival instincts necessary to respond with fear when we sense danger or feel unsafe.
Fear helps protect us. It makes us alert to danger and prepares us to deal with it. Feeling afraid is very natural — and helpful — in some situations. Fear can be like a warning, a signal that cautions us to be careful.
Like all emotions, fear can be mild, medium, or intense, depending on the situation and the person. A feeling of fear can be brief or it can last longer.
What is this project about?
This project is inspired by phobias, each image created will be named after a phobia and the image will also represent the fear.
The images will be designed to make the viewer feel uneasy, perhaps even experience a small feeling of the phobia.
Some images may represent phobias that are seen as irrational, others will be more common. I will be creating these images to make the viewer feel uneasy, because whether the phobia is seen to be irrational or silly to one person, it can be the biggest fear for someone else.
A phobia is a phobia. Everyone just experiences their own phobia in different ways.
What fears do I plan on researching and photographing?
The list will keep growing and changing, but here are a few I plan to represent.
- Agoraphobia
- Aichmophobia
- Dystychiphobia
- Nosophobia
- Simniphobia
- Haematophobia
- Vehophobia
- Nyctophobia
- Photaugliaphobia
- Aquaphobia
- Thalassophobia
- Psychophobia
- Pyrophobia
- Isolophobia
- Taphophobia