Is it possible for a society to have a commonly held idea of what is normal, when few individuals in that society actually meet the criteria for normalcy? That's the question that photographer John William Keedy asked himself when exploring the series It's Hardly Noticeable. Keedy's visual scenarios are all a little "off" in some way, inducing a slight feeling of uneasiness in the viewer. The staged situations he creates are far from "normal," with holes punched in a glass of milk, white out being applied to sheet music, an offering of green peas to be eaten by haphazardly bent cutlery.
Keedy's photographs could be seen as therapeutic self-portraits, with the artist struggling with his own mental issues, having been diagnosed with anxiety disorder at an early age. Keedy explains, "It’s Hardly Noticeable explores the world of a character who navigates living with an unspecified anxiety-based mental illness. He negotiates situations constructed to highlight the impacts and implications of his differences on his thoughts and behaviors, and by doing so raises questions of normalcy... the series reveals the relationship between reality and perception, and highlights issues of pathology while questioning stereotypes of normalcy."
So what is normal? Judging from Keedy's clever photos, it's up to us to decide, and have a little anxiety-ridden fun with it in the meantime.
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