I am sad, Lisa
Introduction
I AM SAD, LISA is a photographic meditation on the fragile architecture of human emotion, steeped in the existential thought of Jean-Paul Sartre. The image does not aim to illustrate a scene, but to evoke a state—a quiet implosion of self, where disorientation, vulnerability, and inner conflict flicker at the edges of visibility.
The subject, suspended in a moment of dazed introspection, becomes a vessel through which the viewer confronts their own sense of ambiguity and solitude. Echoing Sartre’s assertion that “Man is condemned to be free,” the work reflects the vertigo of radical freedom—the burden of choice, the ache of responsibility, and the quiet terror of being one's own author.
The title, I AM SAD, LISA, functions as both confession and invocation. It is not addressed to anyone in particular, yet it resonates with the intimacy of being overheard. Like much of Sartre’s writing, the piece dwells in a space between silence and speech, presence and withdrawal.
Rather than offering resolution, this work dwells in the unresolved. It proposes that to be human is to inhabit contradiction—to long for clarity while living in opacity. As such, I AM SAD, LISA is not merely a photograph, but a philosophical gesture: a still image that continues to ask, rather than answer, what it means to be.