Experiments with Truth - Volume 2 by uelphotography

EXPERIMENTS

VOLUME 2

WITH TRUTH

4 HER TRUTH 8 THE BREAST NEEDS TO RECLAIM ITS TRUE IDENTITY 12 VALID 16 MISJUDGED SKATERS 22 CENSORED 26 BEAUTYFICTION 30 INSIGHT 34 PRESSURES OF SOCIAL MEDIA 36 DEPRESSION? FOUNDERS AND EDITORS Paul Greenleaf Minna Kantonen Simon Miles Rob Pyecroft

CONTENTS

CONTRIBUTORS

PHOTOGRAPHERS Mariyah Afzal.Catherine Christopher.Beth Drain Danae Ennever-Roach.Kai Fagbayi.Megan Kett Razeena Lake.Kassi Neumann.Drewe Williams JOURNALISTS Francesca Battaglia.Elena Donatone Bathilde Ikwange.Ava Rogha Hana Sheikh.Kenya Smith.Julie Uddin GRAPHIC DESIGN Nathalie Musereau-Ali Sneha Modhvadiya (back cover) PRINTED BY Print on Paper ENQUIRIES Minna Kantonen College of Arts Technologies and Innovation University of East London Docklands Campus London E16 2RD m.kantonen@uel.ac.uk Front cover image by Danae Ennever-Roach The views expressed in Experiments with Truth are those of the respective contributors All right reserved 2019 University of East London

EDITORIAL

As one of the pieces in Vol. 1 of Experiments With Truth points out, the first person ever caught on camera was a man having his shoes shined on a Paris street in 1838. He seems to be the only one there. In fact the street is teeming with people too busy to stay still enough to be captured by the long exposure. An accident in this case, but a characteristic of the early history of documentary ‘truth’ is the way that only the shoe-shined elites get a say, or a portrait. And as for news, wind forward from ancient Greek propaganda through centuries of state censorship to the early days of photojournalism when, in 1914, Ben Hecht was able to pass off a trench he’d dug in the ground as an earthquake in Chicago. Today this could not happen. The hoi polloi are not only in the picture, but able to check the pictures too. The internet means that people are better able to call journalists, and other elites, to account than ever before. This volume speaks volumes to this effect. The subjects are broad – and the truth about them is interrogated. In Her Truth an escort posing above the city is also posing questions. In The Breast Needs to Reclaim Its True Identity a young woman appears dressed to attract, but in the next picture upturns your expectations. In Valid three people challenge you to believe truths that people seldom share. In Misjudged Skaters the world of the skatepark is not quite the one you think it is. In Beautyfiction a face asks to be accepted for what it is, rather than for the fictions scrawled upon it. In Insight we are reminded that if a person sees things differently, people may be too quick to see them differently as well. In Depression the tilted camera angle threatens to tip its fragile subject out of the frame, and the text challenges us to decide what depression really is. Censored uses black and white composition to withhold details from us, while the text reminds us that perhaps we should be allowed to censor our own content instead, in the same way that we should be trusted to find out the truth. Simon Miles

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

HER TRUTH

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DREWE WILLIAMS

TEXT BY JULIE UDDIN

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

One of the jobs about which it’s hardest to find out the truth is that of the escort. For a start people get escorts muddled up with prostitutes. But while prostitution is always about sex, an escort is more likely to offer something else, and if sex is part of the transaction, it will be part of something else as well. Neither of the sex industry stereotypes – the druggie forced on the game or the Julia Roberts lookalike meeting men in luxury hotels – is the norm. Yes most escorts are women but sometimes they are men, and they could be full time, or a student, or the girl next door making some extra cash on the side. They can even join their own professional body, the UK National Escorts Association (UKNEA).

“One of the best things that happens to me”

I found a graphic on the site visual.ly that contained the following statistics: Most escorts earn between £100 and £800 an hour, and 73% of them do it because they want to be their own boss. I also read about an anonymous confessions app on which lots of escorts said they got a lot of job satisfaction. But the visual.ly stats were supplied by a UK escort agency, and the Daily Mail article I read about the app in also said that many escorts would stop the work if they could afford to. I’m just one reporter so I haven’t got the resources to carry out a proper survey, but as a young woman I guess I’m intrigued by the fact that any escorts at all like the work. So I decided to try and talk to one, and chose someone from one of the most extraordinary sections of the profession. Most of us know that some men like to be dominated, but have you heard of the Fin Domme, or financial dominatrix? I decided to go on findom.com on which this fetish – which is also called Wallet Rape – explains itself in the following way: “We are meant to work hard in order to earn money, and only spend it because of necessity. What is not expected is for you to work day after day, so you can give it away to someone else because they demand it.” Quite right I’d say, but not for a finsub/money slave/pay piggy (they have lots of names) – who apparently get off on handing over cash, and sometimes complete financial control, to a Fin Domme.

After registering and getting several knockbacks, I managed to speak to a woman in her late twenties who would like to remain anonymous: “People think escort and they think of sex. Yes there is sex involved sometimes, but there’s much more to it, and I also do financial domination. I spend a guy’s cash. He wants me to do this and then he wants me to belittle him and humiliate him. It’s what gets him off. Sometimes … I go to theirs, yes we have sex but that’s what I’m there for”. She tells me that she doesn’t get forced to do anything and that she can refuse a man if she doesn’t want him. But she also admits that she has not told many people what she does. “I’m not ashamed,” she said “… the reason why I keep it on the low is because of how we are portrayed. People judge us on what they think they know and that clouds their view of us.” Ok she was only one person, and I don’t know if she was lying to herself or not. But two years ago the Home Affairs Committee carried out its first ever enquiry into the sex industry and concluded that there were about 70,000 prostitutes working in the UK, who earn on average £2000 a week.

“The more I stare at you, the strongest I become. Your energy is suffocating, dominating. I endure the pressure till I’m numb...”

I don’t know if the report included escorts, as escorts don’t always offer sex. But the fact that the report recommended that even straight prostitution be made legal makes me think that the whole profession – including escorts – needs to be dragged out of the darkness. Because that is the only way we will ever know the truth about it. Speaking Truth to Your Power In this power struggle, You think you’re in charge, As if you’re winning this game, But your ego’s too large. Because in this struggle, Between you and I, It’s me with the power. Because I get you high. Most see my life, Through unreliable eyes. They judge me as low With their whispers and lies But who really dominates, When you pay for my time? I control your pleasure, and pain. So the power’s all mine.

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

THE BREAST NEEDS TO RECLAIM ITS TRUE IDENTITY 8

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CATHERINE CHRISTOPHER

TEXT BY FRANCESCA BATTAGLIA

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

Breastfeeding, or nursing, is the practice of feeding babies with milk from a woman’s mammary gland. Nursing is the primary role of a female breast. Breast milk keeps the child warm and builds its immunity during the most vulnerable time of its life. The health benefits are clear. Just take one of many reports available online, this one from Swansea University: “An increase in breastfeeding rates improves health by reducing UK infant hospital admissions for diarrhoea and lower respiratory infections by 2% and 1%, and leads to longer-term benefits in decreasing childhood obesity.” According to the same report, breastfeeding prevents “sudden infant death, asthma, leukaemia and cardiovascular disease in infants, breast and ovarian cancer in mothers, and diabetes in infants and mother”. So if that’s the truth, why do some people still object to breastfeeding in public? It’s because of the lie inherent in the idea that the primary role of the breast is in fact to attract men or – in some cases – women. Our culture tends to emphasise the breast’s illusory sexual meaning over its authentic one. Of course the sexual significance of the breast is also real, but it is over emphasised to the point where it becomes harmful to babies who need breast milk. And this leads to crazy contradictions. If a breast is partly exposed by provocative clothes, the sight of it is not just generally accepted, but also rather widely appreciated – whereas when people are presented with the same breast in its most natural role – it is often not appreciated at all. The UK is one of the most tolerant countries in Europe when it comes to refugees, immigration, and LGBT rights etc. And yet surprisingly it has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world – for example “…just 34% of babies receiving breast milk at six months of age, compared to 62 per cent in Sweden”, as reported by The Independent. The newspaper lists “negative attitudes towards breastfeeding in public…” as one of the most common reasons given by mothers in a Unicef report for giving the practice up. The report also found that though breastfeeding in public is not against the law in the UK, many women experience so much disapproval in the form of body language and comments, that they sometimes wonder if it is! As a consequence, many mothers feel forced to go into dark and dirty ‘changing’ rooms, or to give their children formula milk instead which, despite improvements made to it over the years, will never be the same as the real thing. The Swansea University report reached exactly the same conclusions as Unicef. Forty per cent of women who stop breastfeeding within six weeks of giving birth said that one of the main reasons for stopping was that they were made to feel ashamed of feeding their babies in public. A lot of this shame is naturally caught up with sex. The President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health – Professor Neena Modi – told the Guardian that, “many men feel discomforted because they grow up to regard the breast as a sexual object.” The suggestion is that if a man associates the breast with sex, what should be normal and wholesome activity suddenly becomes potentially erotic. If that’s the reason for denying babies their mother’s milk then, as Modi says in the Guardian, men “…should put these attitudes well and truly behind them.” And the pressures on women are conflicting. Louise Burns was a 35-yearold mother when she was asked to cover herself up while breastfeeding at Claridge’s, a luxury hotel in the heart of Mayfair. “I felt so humiliated. I was being so discreet,” she said. “No one should be made to feel like that in this day and age – especially when mothers are under pressure to breastfeed.” To me it’s a simple matter of priorities. Modi is unrealistic to expect men to put the association of the breast with sex “well and truly behind them.” There is nothing wrong with a breast taking on an erotic identity. But it should not be the primary identity. And anyway, surely people can separate the one from the other. Even in Saudi Arabia, where the association of the female body with temptation is so much a part of the culture that women have to cover themselves from head to foot, breastfeeding in public is acceptable!

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

VALID

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KASSI NEUMANN

TEXT BY AVA ROGHA

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

I am a woman, age 24, recently hired to work at a coffee shop. The first few weeks were fun and exciting, until one day this tall man showed up. He was a bit older than me, but not much. He started tipping me every day after he was served and as time passed by he started tipping me with notes that he folded into the shape of a heart. This made me uncomfortable. I wanted to tear the hearts up. This went on for weeks then one day he stayed until I finished my shift. I changed the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’, but he still wouldn’t leave. He sat on the sofa that was in front of the counter, and something about him made me afraid that he might hurt me. I discreetly asked my co-worker to ask him to leave, and he eventually did. But I was afraid I might meet him on the way home. When I got home I locked all my doors, made sure all the lights were on, and turned on the TV at full volume so that I felt safe enough to sleep. The next day he came back drunk. I heard him tell my co-worker how I should wear my nametag on my chest to make it more visible, but it was just an excuse to stare at my chest. I was shaking as I heard his request. I was angry but too nervous to say anything. My co-worker didn’t seem to suspect anything. I wanted to tell him how I felt but thought he might think I was paranoid. I asked my manager to change to the early shift as I did not want to be there at closing time and fortunately I didn’t see him for a few weeks. I thought it was over and as I needed the money I asked to go on the night shift again, and soon there he was again, staring at me from the sofa. Just as I was about to close the shop, he walked up to me, started touching my hair and told me I looked pretty. I didn’t want to cause a scene, but made it clear I did not want his attention, but he just stood there smiling. I never wanted to see him again but did not know how to handle the situation. I wanted to speak to someone – my parents, friends or even my manager – but was not sure they would understand, because it doesn’t sound like a lot. But when you are the object of this kind of attention it is different. It feels horrible, but others might not understand. I also worried that the first reaction would be to blame me. Maybe my parents would ask if I was dressing provocatively. If I didn’t wear that tight top and jeans, people would leave me alone, right? And my friends? They would never understand! They were braver than me and would think I was stupid. The next day I finally told my manager about what he’d done and how creepy I found it. But all she said was that – as

there had been no offence there was nothing she could do about it. I quit my job the same day. Luckily, my friend was working in a luxury hotel and got me a job as a housekeeper. It was quite well paid and the wealthy old people who stayed there were nice and tipped generously, and I was able to rent a little room. The only negative thing was that I sometimes found myself alone with someone, but the hotel had security so I felt OK. Then one day I was sent upstairs for what they called a ‘deep clean’ of some toilets and the customer made a request for what he called ‘sexual services’. I didn’t want his cash and I didn’t need it, but I was naïve and he had all the control, and so I did as he asked, because I was desperate to keep the job. But from then on I knew I wasn’t safe in that hotel. How long until he or somebody like him put pressure on me again? And so I quit my job. I had to have an income, so I applied to work as a bartender at a local restaurant. Everyone seemed very friendly, especially the manager, who sat close to me throughout the interview and kissed my forehead before I left. I thought it was just an awkward gesture, and hoped that he had liked me. So I was really happy when they called to say I had got the job. The first few nights went well, but then I noticed that all the employees were young women in their early twenties. About a week later my manager approached me to tell me that I should start wearing a shorter skirt to attract more male customers. My entire body froze. It was not only the request but also the look in his eye that frightened me. I tried to laugh it off, but maybe he thought that meant I was happy, because then he grabbed me... I am a woman – one of the 50% of British women who according to a BBC survey have been assaulted at work. I am 18, 24 or 32. I work at a bar, a coffee shop, a hotel, an office or a nursery. Although most of the assaults I have experienced are low level, they are constant and they are undermining, and they need to be taken seriously. All the things that I have just written about have happened to people who have shared their experiences online. But only the more serious incidents might ever get reported. Low-level harassment won’t. And why should it be? We have laws to protect people against serious assault, and so that’s fine. But there is a problem here – that if the scale of low-level harassment is unacknowledged, then it is somehow not ‘true’ which means that nothing can change. But it is true, and things need to change.

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

TEXT BY KENYA SMITH

SKATERS

MISJUDGED 16

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARIYAH AFZAL

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

The ‘truth’ about someone can be hidden by our prejudice about them. Many people lump skateboarders together as a ‘type’ – and as potentially ‘up to no good.’ So I decided to go down to the Meanwhile 2 Skatepark in Royal Oak near Paddington to meet some of them. Through my images I want to show that we should not judge people based on our first impression of them.

Chris: What’s up? My name’s Chris and I’m an artist. Drawing is one of my many hobbies alongside skateboarding. As you can imagine, I sometimes deal with people associating me with disruptive and anti-social behaviour. When I go down to Royal Oak, I like to bring some of my art supplies to create stuff. I do see how me drawing on certain objects outside could be seen as anti-social behaviour, but I only ever draw on things that are down at the skatepark. For us skateboarders, the skatepark is like a second home to us so when I’m drawing down there it feels like I’m decorating my own place. I also think it makes the park look pretty sick... It’s no fun skateboarding somewhere that’s plain. To be honest, I’ve never seen any skateboarders who fit the stereotype that’s always linked to us. People just look at us and assume our characteristics without giving us a chance. We’re just like everyone else. The only difference is the fact that we like to skateboard.

Anas: Hey, my name’s Anas and I often come to Royal Oak to skate. People look at me and automatically guess that I’m a skateboarder which I understand because I kind of do have that ‘skateboarder look’ but I’m not just a skateboarder. Skateboarding is just something I’m in to, it’s not my entire life. I also love to cook and that’s why I work as a chef. I don’t know why but whenever I tell people this they’re surprised. I mean I get it. Even though there are tons of male chefs out there, a lot of people seem to class cooking as a feminine activity. Skateboarding is seen as a masculine activity. I’m a walking oxymoron, haha. Just kidding. I personally don’t understand why it would be surprising for me to be a chef. People see me walking with a skateboard in my hand and assume I’m someone who gets up to no good. It’s ridiculous. Skateboarding is just another activity like football or tennis. It seems like us who like to skate always end up being labelled negatively. It’s a shame some people have prejudgements about me, they’re missing out on great recipes!

Jesse: Hi, I’m Jesse and I’m musician. I like to spend my spare time skateboarding at Royal Oak. Skateboarding has always been a hobby of mine. I love spending hours just chilling with my mates and skating. It’s great for clearing your mind and simply socialising. I love the different sounds you hear when you’re down at Royal Oak: the skateboards grinding, the echoes, the wind... It’s all therapeutic. As a musician, I sometimes find inspiration down there as I meet a lot of interesting people. Just being outside is inspirational... You notice a lot when you take the time to admire everything. I’ve realised that a lot of people think that us lot that enjoy skateboarding are a nuisance when that’s really not the case. I honestly don’t get it. All we do is skate and mind our own business. People see the way I dress, the way I keep my hair and probably think the worse of me but if they actually took the time to get to know me, they’d see that I’m a decent guy. To be honest, I don’t really care what people think of me, but I must admit that it is annoying being judged based on the fact that I like to skateboard and the way I dress. I’m way more than just a guy who skateboards. I’m a musician too, you know? I’d much rather have people judge me based on my music. Listening to my music will tell you much more about me.

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

SOREN KIERKEGAARD

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

CENSORED

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAI FAGBAYI

TEXT BY ELENA DONATONE

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

Over 2400 years ago the Greek philosopher Socrates was ordered by the state to drink poison for corrupting the young minds with his ideas. Censorship has been with us for a long time. Famous examples include the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s – called for not by the state – but by the German Student Union! Those against censorship condemn it for the way that it controls people. Those that support it try to argue that it protects people. Most agree that censorship in North Korea is about control. Before anything is allowed on the TV or radio, it has to pass a test. Before 2013, visitors had to hand their mobile phones in at the border. Journalists are not free to write what they want. They are servants of the state. Foreign journalists are forbidden from “distorting the realities in the DPRK” (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and are discouraged from speaking to local people. The population also has restricted access to the Internet. The arts are censored as well. Unsurprisingly, any content that promotes the prestige of the ruling family is preferred. But you don’t only get censorship in totalitarian states such as North Korea. More democratic nations employ it, though sometimes in more subtle ways. The U.K. is thought to be one of most liberal and open-minded countries in the world, but is it? On the one hand tolerance appears to be on the increase – for example of gay marriage and being transgender. But on the other hand there appears to be an intolerance of anything that might offend anyone. So is too much censorship being accepted in the service of ‘protecting’ people, and has political correctness (PC) gone too far? More in Common is an organization founded in memory of Jo Cox, the British MP who was murdered in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. One of the findings of a More in Common report on American political ‘tribes’ was that over 70% of those under 24 that they spoke to thought political correctness in the US was a ‘problem’ – because of the way that it valued the need not to offend people over the right of everybody to be able to express their own ideas. Yascha Mounk, a political science professor at Harvard University, describes the trend this way: “It seems like everyday you wake up

something has changed… Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it black guy? African-American?... You are on your toes because you never know what to say.” Mounk also argues that because PC views are more commonly held by more educated middle class elites, those who don’t share these views are dismissed as ignorant or, for example, racist. Ignorance can be a matter of opinion, or belief. For example there was the case of the six-yearold girl at a North Carolina school who was asked to remove the word ‘God’ from the poem she wrote for her grandfather – as its inclusion undermined ideas of a separation between the state and the church. And a lecturer at Ball State University, Indiana, was not allowed to include ‘intelligent design’ – i.e. God – as one of the options for how the world was made. This is a good example, because it relates to an important truth that everyone wants to know. How did we get here? But whether you think that the Creation story is an experiment with the truth or not, surely you are entitled to your own opinion. Examples of apparent PC abuses over here in the UK have been reported in the press for some time. Back in 2010 the Hertfordshire boss of a recruitment agency who tried to place an add through the local Jobcentre told a national newspaper that she was informed that asking for ‘reliable’ and ‘hard-working’ applicants could be offensive to unreliable people. In 2015 a letter from a school to a pupil’s parents went viral. It criticised them for allowing their daughter to come into school with a violent image – the picture of Wonder Woman on her lunchbox. And in 2016 most nationals reported on the decision by a Welsh town council to ask the county council to ban Punch and Judy shows from a seaside event in case it encouraged domestic violence. Some of these stories might be exaggerated, but the fact that examples of censorship being used to protect people’s feelings are getting more common not less, makes you wonder whether the government is run by liberal elites who want to take over the world and refuse to tolerate any other opinions other than their own. Perhaps it’s time for a revolution. I urge all students on all UK campuses to take up arms for the right to offend, and to be offended – because otherwise the UK will end up like North Korea!

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

BEAUTYFICTION

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAZEENA LAKE

TEXT BY FRANCESCA BATTAGLIA

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

Social media promotes standards in beauty and fashion that are often unreal and therefore unattainable. This unreality exists on two levels: On the level of skin, the use of makeup filters and skin bleaching etc. means that skin is not ‘real’. And on the level of representation, because of Photoshop and other digital manipulation, the image is not real either. The result is that it is hard to understand what is authentic and what is artificial in the era of social media. But according to Dr Carmen Lefevre, a behavioural scientist at University College London, we don’t really care. Speaking to the web-based magazine Refinery29, Dr Lefevre said, “It doesn’t really matter if we know a photo is fake or not – we all have an automatic response to things we see, so those kinds of photos still have a psychical impact”. And some of the weird beauty trends that go viral on social media appear to prove her point. For example, currently trending on Instagram are the braided brows promoted by Eros Gomez, an online makeup artist in LA. It began like this. He wanted to braid his eyebrows, but his brows were not long enough, so he decided to “just edit the braid on” with Photoshop. He owned up to the fact in the picture caption. But it made no difference. About half his followers were so impressed that the Photoshopped look went viral. Either people failed to read the caption and thought the brows were real, or they knew the braids were Photoshopped and preferred it that way! The second interpretation is backed up by a lot of what you see online. For example I found a 2017 Twitter post by Charmaine Dalmacio promoting another crazy trend, the squiggly eyebrow. Above a picture of her own squiggly creation Dalmacio writes, “This Squiggly Brow Look Is So Cool, You’ll Think It’s Photoshopped” – as if fake is best. This feels like madness to me, but as Dr Lefevre says, if we surrender to the fake beauty standards we find online, we “end up internalising those beauty standards” and the “more time you spend surrounded by certain images, the more you normalise that kind of look”. Razeena Lake’s work for this volume interrogates some of these ideas, so to finish off I thought she should tell you how it is, in her own words. “When I started college I was the youngest in my year, and had a baby face – so I felt insecure about the way everyone looked older. So the girls at college and online all made me hate my appearance and I was sad. I watched a social experiment on YouTube in which a woman in a $10 outfit was almost chased out of a Gucci store. But when the same woman came back the next day in designer attire they treated her like a VIP. A similar experience happened to me in a posh boutique in Portugal. Because it was hot and I was dressed casual, the staff seemed suspicious. So in our society you can be looked down on for looking a certain way. By photographing my model under a weak light and having only one side of her face made up, I wanted to show that both natural and glammed-up looks can be beautiful. Personally, it took me a while to get used to my features. I used to hate my appearance, so I forced myself to learn how to use makeup so that I could fit in with everyone else. However, I gradually realised that my beauty was beneath what I was trying to cover up. So now I embrace my natural beauty more than ever, and feel like a queen. Everyone is beautiful in their own way, and so we have to fight to protect that idea, and not let whatever is pushed at us online get into our heads.”

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

INSIGHT

PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANAE ENNEVER-ROACH

TEXT BY BATHILDE IKWANGE

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

If you want to understand me, you’ll have to go back to my childhood. In every school, there is always a girl who is different from the others and who everyone makes fun of. Well in my school that was me. I hated reading out in class. If I was not sure how to pronounce a word, I used to skip it, because I didn’t want to embarrass myself and give them an opportunity to laugh at me. “She’s dumb. She’s stupid.’’ I used to hear that all the time, and sometimes got into fights.

I see diffreent thinsg to you. For example I am cosntanlty msitaking the ‘a’ and ‘e’ in words, evne out on the street. Simply raeding the naem of a strete can be e prolbem. In my pictures I have tride to show this. To hepl and reassure mysalf I’m not in the wrogn plcae I smoetimse have to use my phnoe to maek sure I’m in the rihgt plaec. This, and a thuosadn other thinsg eahc day annoy me, but there is nothign I can do. I find it herd to axplein whet it is to be dyslaxic but throuhg my pitcures I hope you’ll undarstend a bit better and percieve the truht of what it is to be dyslexix.

The teacher’s assistant had an idea what was wrong with me. She remembered some of my traits from when she was young, and mentioned it to my parents, but I never received any help. It was only in my last year of college that I finally began to get help during exams because of my poor spelling. I was put in a quiet room with only a few other people, which made it easier to concentrate.

Some facts about dyslexia

But people still made fun of me, and so I also began to believe I was stupid. It was only when I got to university that I was finally diagnosed as a dyslexic. At last I could realise that I was not an idiot after all,and might have something unique to offer. It also meant I was able to get extra tutor support and to have more time to hand in my work. My memory and concentration are not good. If I want to learn or understand anything in class I record it if I can, and if I can’t then I ask as many questions as I can to one of my classmates so as to reassure myself. Sometimes I get stressed out and I panic. I once even broke my laptop out of frustration.

There is evidence that the dyslexic brain is bigger and more creative than other brains.

Dyslexia is the most common learning disability. 50% of people with dyslexia are left handed, compared to 11% of the population.

Dyslexia is often diagnosed with other related conditions, such as dyspraxia and attention deficit disorder. Some academics say that dyslexia does not exist. They argue that poor reading takes many forms and can be caused by a variety of factors that should all be supported – whereas diagnosis of dyslexia means that only those with the diagnosis get the support they need.

My problems with memory are not just in the classroom. They also happen with my family. I remember their faces but I often struggle to remember their names. It’s hard for me to explain, but the ‘truth’ you see in front of you is not the same as mine.

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

But are these experiments with the truth as bad as people constantly make out? What’s necessarily wrong with being a different person online to the one you are offline? To paraphrase Shakespeare: “All the internet’s a stage, and so why can’t all the men and women on it be merely players?” So why are there so many articles that say that particularly young people cannot tell what is real and what is not on social media, and that this messes with their mental health? Are users of social media really as naïve as these writers say they are? After all we don’t have to believe everything we read – either on social media or about social media! Just because some people attack their favourite YouTube or Instagram influencer for not being ‘authentic’ doesn’t mean that most other people know the score and don’t really mind. So I think it’s those self-righteous followers who are at fault – not the influencers. The Influencers are simply doing what they are supposed to do, which is to be the entertainers and the dream-makers. Whereas the followers who criticise them are spoiling the party – and if they don’t like it, they should simply stop following whoever it is who they are attacking. The criticism influencers get online can also be confused and hypocritical. For example, Patricia Bright, a black British YouTuber, uploaded a video in which she tells her subscribers that after giving birth to her daughter in 2016 she developed Diastatsis Recti, which made her stomach stick out more than usual. So she decided to have liposuction. So what happened? She got attacked for being ‘insecure’ about her body and for therefore encouraging any young girls who followed her to be insecure about their bodies as well. The suggestion was that by keeping the ‘authentic’ Diastatsis Recti-look she would have come across as more authentic and honest herself. But what’s honest about pretending you like what has happened to your body when you don’t? Patricia has a life outside of social media and wanted the surgery. So maybe she could have had it but not told anyone? That way she would not be encouraging young girls to have cosmetic surgery. But then she would also have been telling lies, and would have been attacked for that instead. Another reason why these followers should not be so critical is that this is a two-way thing. They know that social media is a stage and they want their influencers to look right on that stage – which yes usually means they want them to conform to some idealised version of beauty. But the thing is they know it’s only an ideal. And as they will only follow the influencers who present that ideal, how can they then blame the influencer for doing whatever’s necessary to look like that? And as for cosmetic surgery, why do so many people think it’s always about insecurity? You might love your nose so much that you want to enhance it? Perhaps it’s got something to do with being an even “better version” of yourself that you really are? Another reason for some of the ‘inauthentic’ content on social media is something that I personally have no problem with – which is “faking it till you make it.” By pretending to have the life you don’t quite have yet – it might motivate you to get it! Ok, so this might tempt you to put captions on pictures of places you have never been to in order to make it seem as though you have. But so what? This is social media. It is not real life! So as long as it’s not dangerous – in which case it will probably be illegal anyway – experimenting with the truth on social media should be celebrated, not attacked.

SOCIAL MEDIA

PRESSURES OF

Most people recognise that the way people present themselves on social media isn’t always authentic. Some people create a completely fake persona. Others edit the truth, perhaps only showing us the good things about their lives.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY MEGAN KETT

TEXT BY KENYA SMITH

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

DEPRESSION?

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BETH DRAIN

TEXT BY HANA SHEIKH

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

Beth’s pictures explore a condition that according to the Mental Health Foundation is “the predominant mental health problem worldwide” – depression. Beth’s own experiences of depression have been long and debilitating, and at times she has felt badly let down by the services that are supposed to help. When it comes to mental health, most people agree that support in the UK is underfunded, but as far as everything else is concerned, there is a lot of disagreement, as this article below by Hana Sheikh suggests. There are more than 200 classified forms of mental illness. What a lot of them have in common is an element of losing touch with reality, or the ‘truth.’ But can those trying to diagnose and understand mental health know what the ‘truth’ about mental health is? Judging by all the disagreement out there, possibly not. Take mental health on campus as just one example. Given that Beth and I are students, it would be good to find some consensus. But there isn’t any. So I am going to summarise two points of view gathered from different articles I have read, then leave you to decide which one is the truth and which one is an experiment with it! Students should not be such snowflakes. This opinion says that the rise in mental health amongst students is a myth, because being stressed out does not make you mentally ill. The argument goes like this: Being young and being at university is stressful. You have deadlines and you have fees. But instead of caving into these fears and allowing a professional whose job depends on it to diagnose you with a mental health problem, you should take control to make things better – by for example protesting against the fees – as they would have in the good old days. The problems start at school when kids are encouraged to see everything in terms of mental health. This is the start of a process that turns young people into snowflakes who melt away from anything challenging at the first opportunity.

The Internet does not help, as it encourages young people to self-diagnose. One negative side effect of all this is that the limited mental health support available on campus is swamped by people who are not really ill, when it should be there for people who really are. So there is no epidemic of mental health problems on campus – only an epidemic of misdiagnosis. Stop calling us snowflakes! This opinion says that there is a real epidemic, which is being made worse by the snowflake accusation. The argument goes like this: There is a lot of evidence that the transition to university is extremely difficult. Common problems include feelings of isolation, significant financial pressures, and the inability to balance work and study that comes from that. And if surveys show that this is what young people are feeling, then we should believe them and do something about it rather than writing them off as snowflakes – especially as research has shown that the label will make them less likely to seek the support that they might urgently need. People who call students snowflakes are likely to be from a generation that did not have to pay fees, and did not have to cope with the well-researched pressures resulting from social media. And if it’s not really mental health that is plaguing our campuses, but simply the perfectly reasonable levels of stress and anxiety that we should expect during this time of a young person’s life, then why have suicides in UK universities increased by 79% from 2007 (75) to 2014 (134) – when student numbers have only gone up around 24% in that time? Answer that if you can. So what do you think? Either too many students are going to see the university health & wellbeing team, when they should be making way for the kind of real problems that Beth has experienced and which are expressed so powerfully in her work – or there are more and more people on campus with serious conditions, and so there needs to be more support to help them. Which do you think is the truth?

EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH

BACK COVER BY SNEHA MODHVADIYA

Experiments with Truth - Volume 2

Articles inside

CENSORED

PRESSURES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

BEAUTYFICTION

HER TRUTH