Breaking Point

Name of artist: Erin Quinn

Email erinquinnphotography@gmail.com

Website: http://www.erinquinnphotography.com

Size of Works: 3 Large Scale Images 156cm (h) x112cm (w)

Series title: Breaking Point

Artist’s Statement:

“Breaking Point” is a photographic study of the self limiting behaviour of humans as well as their amazing ability to adapt and even overcome adversity and fear by a shift in mental awareness and attitude.

Japanese pearl fisherman, not using any breathing apparatus, would train themselves to hold their breath for several minutes under water in order to dive to great depths.

In breath-hold diving a person's "breaking point" is the moment a person gives in to their overwhelming urge to take a breath. This moment can be delayed by several minutes by focusing the mind and pushing past ones own personal breaking point. This requires a shift mentally and emotionally as well as a strong desire to push through fear and self imposed limitations.

The series Breaking Point began as a personal project to investigate the artist’s past fears of drowning and everything that particular fear represented. While uncovering her own, she photographs someone else moving past their own physical and psychological limitations. She’s interested in how much of a person’s desire to take a breath at a particular moment (ie. Breaking Point) is a manifestation of the person’s own fears or self limitations. How do we know when it is actually the body’s physiological response and not just our mind telling us to breathe? This is an ongoing series in which Erin approaches acquaintances and strangers asking them to pose for her in a bath. Capturing this moment results in an intimate and emotive transaction between the subject, artist and viewer. The subject is caught, mid struggle, revealing innermost fears, triumphs and the time in between.

The first image in this won the prestigious Curtin O’Donoghue Photography Award in the RHA’s Annual Show (Dublin 2011), has been published in Manifest (USA) International Photography Annual 1, exhibited in the Royal Ulster Academy’s Annual Show 2013 in the Ulster Museum, Belfast and was exhibited in the New Living Artists show in Dublin November 2013.