Photographer Annemarie Deckers is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Absence’. To see Annemarie’s body of work, click on any photograph.

It’s No Use Crying over Spilled Milk, They Say

These images are part of my project “Absence.” It started from the reflection that the kitchen, the part of my house where I spend most of my time, has all sorts of different connotations, making it into a very ambivalent place: on the one hand kitchens are associated with warmth, coziness, a safe haven; on the other hand they are also the spaces to which women were traditionally relegated, a domestic prison. I felt I had created a sort of prison for myself, as if my life had shrunk to the walls of this room (through a combination of factors such as working from home, motherhood, moving country, a dying relationship, etc.). This feeling however did not pertain only to the space itself. It felt like a mental prison; a prison within the prison consisting of the expectations of society and those around us, but also created by our own decisions earlier on in life. A prison partially of my own device.

I began to reflect more deeply on the feelings (of emptiness, longing, loneliness, doubt, imprisonment) and inner conflicts (decisions, how to act upon these reflections, letting go of dreams) these thoughts provoked. As the world in which we live changes, our old views, feelings and perspectives may lose their meaning or become irrelevant. Confronted with changes in our relationships with others and in the place and the world in which we live, we are forced to question our own identity and our place in the world. In a world that seems to be constantly in upheaval, we have to try to find our own voice (again), to reinvent ourselves, to redefine who we are, our aspirations and dreams, always in a dynamic relation with our immediate and the wider world. These images explore these feelings and questions.

In her photographic practice, Annemarie Deckers explores experiences of alienation, in-between states, and the fluidity of identity, often touching on the uncanny, abjection, and moments of disintegration or loss of self. Combining staged and found images, she constructs cyclical, non-linear narratives shaped by recurring motives, patterns, and fragments of lived experience. Her recent work unfolds primarily in the domestic space, approached as a microcosmos where intimate tensions meet broader human concerns, and as a psychological landscape that echoes an underlying state of mind. Her approach brings together conceptual thinking, theoretical research, and personal experience, drawing on philosophical and psychoanalytic texts to deepen the questions her images raise.

All images and text © Annemarie Deckers