13 Emotional States Depicted through Surreal Photographs

Have you ever sensed you just weren’t acting like yourself? Have you ever felt the immeasurable burden of keeping a dark secret? Have you ever been so relaxed and free spirited as if you were “walking on a clouds?”

Lara Zankoul, a Lebanon-born artist, is producing a dramatic series of concept art that combines creatively diverse scenes exploring the charm and mystery of the human psyche. Each of her works touches on different characters interacting with dream-like surroundings to express various emotional states. Her surreal photographs and landscapes express emotions from “detachment” or “paranoia” to euphoric “orbit” moments that seem to be “bypassing time.” Zankoul graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Masters in Economics and didn’t start on her journey in the art of photo manipulation and surrealism until 2008.

Regarding her design process, Zankoul says her work started as a cathartic way to work through her thoughts:

My approach primarily started as a retrospection and unintentional therapeutic activity to de-compose the complexities of the mind by composing images.”

Here are some highlights from Zankoul’s Conceptual and Magical Room series, displayed in her website gallery.

The Burden of a Secret

Zankoul says:

Bizarre situations, misplaced items, surreal dimensions, strange struggles…leave the mind to wander in a possibility of interpretations, to re-invent and complete unfinished stories, to explore unanswered questions. Through my pictures, I invite the viewer to decipher the hidden symbols and interact with the picture to reflect on his reality and personal experience. What seems to be so unreal in the first place, could be closer than we expect, to the complexities of our mind.”