Dana Stirling

Dana Stirling

why am i sad

20 × 24 cm (7.8x 9.4 inch)
112 pages
60 color ills.
Hard Cover
Swiss Binding
Kehrer Verlag
2024

About the Book:

In Why Am I Sad, Dana Stirling embarks on an exploration of the complex interplay between mental health and artistic expression in associative, poetic photographs. »Growing up, I spent most of my time in my room, wherein loneliness pervaded both within and beyond its walls. Family failed to provide solace; instead, it became a source of stress, anxiety, and a prevailing sadness. Often unspoken in my family, my mother’s battle with clinical depression cast a shadow that took years to fully comprehend.« Through navigating her own emotions, the project assumes a broader cultural ignificance, transcending personal narratives to engage with universal discourse on mental health. The visual diary becomes a testament to the transformative power of art, revealing layers of vulnerability, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of meaning.

Book review by Lisa Beard |

Don’t be fooled by the many smiley faces found in Dana Stirling’s Why Am I Sad?, a 112 page, 60-photograph visual treat that addresses this very question. Although there are many ironies and subtleties found between its covers that made me smile, it is most likely not a book that will make a person laugh until their sides hurt, and contrary to what many of us really mean when we say we are “fine”; it really is fine. 

© Dana Stirling

Published by Kehrer Verlag, this Swiss-bound book with a minimalist and clever cover is smartly sequenced, often alternating between image and blank space that allows for one to carefully consider each photograph singularly but also as a part of an entirety in order to allow a narrative that feels both personal and universal to form. 

Using a medium format Mamiya RZ67 camera, a tripod, and Kodak Ektar 100 film - film known for its qualities of vivid color, high saturation, and outstanding contrast and sharpness - Dana beautifully photographed a cross-section of American landscapes, both at home and during her travels. Many are photographs made organically, things that revealed themselves to her, and a few are staged. The bold color subjects of the photographs are often set against muted or desolate landscapes or backgrounds which is an effective and interesting way to visually parallel the performative outer nature we outwardly project during the tougher and more harder to distinguish times of inner turmoil, doubt, and hopelessness that so many of us find ourselves Smack! in the middle of during a few parts of our lives, or, for the unfortunate some of us, consistently throughout the courses of our lives. 

The thoughtfully composed photographs are a product of paying attention to the everyday, but importantly, when sequenced with careful intent as they are in this book, they allow for a dialogue between artist and audience that is both personal and universal, and with over 280 million people struggling with depression, we are prompted to consider the title/question in a thorough manner, not from a place of stigmatization but instead from one of understanding and empathy, even if the answer to the book’s title/question, as it is for herself, is not quite clear. 

This book is driven by smart motifs: obvious are the found smiley faces, but also reflectors, signs, and the fragility of life as seen through death. 

Mouse, Greenport, NY, 2023 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Less obvious but just as important is the feeling of being an outsider, possibly abandoned and left with the sense of being tetherless, a feeling that is confirmed when taking into account Dana’s words that close the book: “As a child of immigrants, I found myself living in a duality that often left me feeling like an outsider in both worlds. I was a cultural chameleon, navigating the ever-shifting boundaries of identity. Amidst the cacophony of conflicting cultures, there was a profound sense of isolation, a feeling of not quite belonging to either place. It was as if I were adrift in a sea of identities, constantly searching for solid ground amid the shifting tides of self-definition.”

When words failed her, making photographs provided a visual language, and they still do: 

“Objects ceased to be mere artifacts; they became vessels for unspoken narrative, a language I could speak fluently when words failed me.”

While I always appreciate clever wordplay, I also appreciate clever visual play, and this is an obvious strength of Dana’s. The book opens perfectly, with an image of a reflector, actually two reflectors, surrounded by purple lupine; one is easy to miss because it is falling over. The lupine is lush and bright, gorgeous, really; and that makes it less noticeable that one reflector isn’t standing tall as the other is. Sometimes it is hard to notice that something is imperfect when beauty surrounds it.

Pride of Madeira, Shoreline Highway, CA, 2019 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

These beacons that either guide us or warn us about what lies ahead are peppered throughout Why Am I Sad? They are sometimes alone, sometimes falling over, sometimes nailed into the trunks of trees, but just as interesting is what comes to mind when thinking of the word “reflect”. Besides their literal uses as seen in these images, “reflect” can also be thought of in relation to a mirror, and that idea of reflection is something to consider within the context of this book. Whether it is a literal reflection, a mirror of sorts, that a person sees when looking, or an impetus to self-reflect, bright and happy reflectors set against dreary, weather-worn settings point toward a tension many of us personally feel when sitting with our own everyday lives. And, in her own words, when words failed Dana (and as she still does) she turned to photography to find her voice: “Each photograph became a window into [her] soul, a reflection of the inner dialogue [she] dared not speak aloud.”

Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley, CA, 2022 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Moving through the book, the feeling of being left out of desirable things happening is tangible. This points toward a certain type of loneliness; not one that is momentary and fleeting, but one that circulates underneath and can be hard to admit. Whether it is looking into a window where one can’t see beyond the wall of pink balloons that screams a fun party just happened or is indeed happening or we are looking into a field we are locked out of, complete with a cowgate with a bright yellow bow on it, the sense of unwanted isolation is palpable. 

Pink Balloons, Doylestown, PA, 2021 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Yellow Bow, Fort Ann, NY, 2020 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Stirling’s images show desolation and maybe even a sort of desperation among a smorgasbord of American landscapes that mirrors the despondent state and fragility that most of us have felt personally at one time or another, and that many of us feel right now, when considering the divisive nature of well … everything it seems; and along with reflecting individual feelings, the photographs mirror our society in a larger way. This is noticeably seen in the photographs of an SOS sign for our society that is jutting out from a red, white, and blue painted run-down building, of a dead bird caught in a tangle of thorns, or what looks like a small orchestra of rubbernecking dead bees lined up to gawk at one bee that met its fate a little earlier than the rest did. 

SOS, Mount Hope, WV, 2023 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Dead Bird, Route 178 Highway, Weldon, CA, 2021 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

   Bees, Queens, NY, 2015 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Even a singular beautiful, glowing but sharp-handed cacti seems to be giving us all the finger. 

But what is there to do when at times, this is often reality? After all, even though family, partners, and friends are often relied upon for support, really, we spend the most time with ourselves - and so what then? Stirling’s photographs do suggest that there is something to hold onto, and that is a sort of hope. In the midst of all of the chaos and hardship, and yes, sometimes dysthymic depression, life can still be funny; maybe not laugh-out-loud funny, but a wry sort of funny. The smattering of smiley faces contained in the photographs in this book aren’t exactly happy. When considering their context, even though they are mostly smiling, some are almost mocking Dana and her camera, and via it, us. Some smiles are fading, one is even found on a left behind winking and smiling hot dog that, at the point of its capture, escaped its likely future fate of being eaten.

Glowing Saguaro, Saguaro National Park, AZ, 2022 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

Dinner for One, Barstow, CA, 2022 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

As we see, smiles can be found almost anywhere, even in the most unexpected places, even when surrounded by decay or abandonment, even when they are upside down, and they indicate something important although it isn’t happiness really, and it isn’t quite malice either. For me, it’s a simple indication of hope through finding humor or a sort of happiness in dark or hard times. As Ken Kesey once famously wrote in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “When you lose your laugh, you lose your footing.”  Sometimes, as the old saying goes, we unfortunately feel the need to have to “fake it ‘til we make it.” But, it is nice to have some understanding along the way. And, related to that, just as it began, the book ends with the perfect photograph: a glowing sign with the words “Look Up” set against a dismal parking lot. 

Look Up, Rhodell, WV, 2023 © Dana Stirling / Kehrer Verlag

When one looks closely, there are other intricacies found: a cross, what looks like a little Jesus, an angel, and one more undeterminable but assumedly religious statue along with the sign’s message; all can be considered signs of hope. When one can find the tenacity to look up through it all, and to find humor and beauty in the everyday drabness and harshness of our world, it’s much easier to believe that there is a point to everything and that there is some hope left for us all.