A Film That Refused to Behave

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There’s been no shortage of reaction to Joker: Folie à Deux—and most of it, predictable. The musical framing confused audiences. The tonal shifts made them uncomfortable. It didn’t behave the way a sequel is supposed to behave. But what looked jarring on the surface revealed something else entirely underneath.

It wasn’t a musical for the character himself. Rhythm as a coping mechanism. Performance as structure. Inside the chaos, he wasn’t just unraveling—he was building a logic of his own. While the outside world saw disorder, inside his mind it was coherent. It made sense. It had shape.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just psychosis—it’s construction. A private logic taking shape inside collapse. And while his is a delusional framework, it’s still a form of authorship—one that mirrors, in a darker way, how many artists build from tension. Not to explain their pain, but to hold it. To survive it. To give it shape.

He wasn’t drowning in self-pity. He wasn’t begging to be understood. He channeled the chaos into rhythm, expression, delusion—yes—but movement.

That discomfort reminded me of something familiar—not from watching a film, but from working inside an industry that often misreads emotional intention. The response to Joker: Folie à Deux mirrored what I’ve experienced for years—not in cinematic form, but in how people have responded to my personal work. Especially within the commercial space, where expectations are shaped by trends, moodboards, and visual shorthand, there’s often little room for ambiguity.

When people approach my photography through that lens, they tend to look for a style—something replicable, legible, familiar. But my personal work was never about style. It was built to hold feeling. Tension. Narrative. That doesn’t mean the work can’t adapt across formats. But too often, the reading stops at the surface—dark tones, cinematic framing, isolated figures—without asking what those choices are actually doing.

I’ve made images that hold story. That suggest trauma without performing it. That place beauty next to collapse. And more than once, I’ve seen people pull the wrong thread. Some saw exploitation where there was only empathy. Others dismissed the work as stylized discomfort. They were looking for format—not feeling.

But the photograph, when used with intention, can do what cinema often can’t—it can stop everything. It can freeze a moment in a character’s spiral. It can hold contradiction, without needing to resolve it. And in that stillness, there’s space. To feel. To imagine. To project. Or to avoid.

The work I’ve created was never just aesthetic. It carried structure. Tension. And authorship. But for a long time, those deeper layers tended to land only with the few who were willing to sit still with an image. The wider context—especially in commercial culture—often favored immediacy over interpretation. That’s starting to shift. Slowly. But the hunger for depth is growing again.

That discomfort reminded me of something familiar—not from watching a film, but from working inside an industry that often misreads emotional intention. The response to Joker: Folie à Deux mirrored what I’ve experienced for years—not in cinematic form, but in how people have responded to my personal work. Especially within the commercial space, where expectations are shaped by trends, moodboards, and visual shorthand, there’s often little room for ambiguity.

When people approach my photography through that lens, they tend to look for a style—something replicable, legible, familiar. But my personal work was never about style. It was built to hold feeling. Tension. Narrative. That doesn’t mean the work can’t adapt across formats. But too often, the reading stops at the surface—dark tones, cinematic framing, isolated figures—without asking what those choices are actually doing.

I’ve made images that hold story. That suggest trauma without performing it. That place beauty next to collapse. And more than once, I’ve seen people pull the wrong thread. Some saw exploitation where there was only empathy. Others dismissed the work as stylized discomfort. They were looking for format—not feeling.

But the photograph, when used with intention, can do what cinema often can’t—it can stop everything. It can freeze a moment in a character’s spiral. It can hold contradiction, without needing to resolve it. And in that stillness, there’s space. To feel. To imagine. To project. Or to avoid.

The work I’ve created was never just aesthetic. It carried structure. Tension. And authorship. But for a long time, those deeper layers tended to land only with the few who were willing to sit still with an image. The wider context—especially in commercial culture—often favored immediacy over interpretation. That’s starting to shift. Slowly. But the hunger for depth is growing again.

Over the years, the visuals have evolved—but the foundation hasn’t. What I’ve always been building is emotional structure, not aesthetic decoration. Yet that’s rarely how it was received. Tension was mistaken for mood. Silence was read as emptiness. The image may have held a scene—but few were looking for a story inside it.

Part of this comes from the culture around photography itself. The medium is too often approached as shorthand—either for beauty, or branding, or a particular kind of taste. But I’ve never been interested in visual statements that resolve easily. The work I’m drawn to—the work I make—asks more than that. It withholds just enough to make you stop. And in that space, it gives you back to yourself.

Stillness, when built with intention, can create narrative. A single image can destabilize. It can hold conflict without explaining it. But only if the viewer is willing to engage beyond the surface.

I don’t aim to provoke. I aim to create tension that feels lived. That’s the difference. Not style, but authorship. Not story as concept, but story as residue—left behind in the frame, waiting to be picked up.

What I Stand Behind Now

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The work hasn’t changed, but I have. What once lived beneath the surface—misunderstood, or simply unseen—has come into sharper focus. Not because it’s louder, but because I’ve learned to stand behind it without needing to translate it for others.

This isn’t just about reclaiming a voice—it’s about calling for a shift in how we engage with images, with stories, with each other. We’ve trained ourselves to reward what explains itself, and to ignore what asks for interpretation. But the work that endures isn’t the one that hands you the answer. It’s the one that stays open.

There’s a difference between creating from pain and performing your pain to feel valid. One is emotionally responsible. The other is emotionally codependent.

What I return to now isn’t resolution—it’s weight. Presence. Friction. The kind of authorship that doesn’t beg to be understood, but dares to be held.

Because the work that stays with us—the kind we return to years later—is rarely the one that explained itself.

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It’s the one that trusted us to look again.