Ángel Castillo Perona

During 2017 I experienced a strong anxiety crisis that came into my life all of a sudden. I have always been an anxious person but didn't know it until I started experiencing panic attacks and not sleeping at night. Something inside me had broken and it would not let me continue with my day to day. I remember days when, on my way back to work, I had to stop walking because I felt like I was out my own mind and my body, without knowing very well what was happening. Many times, I think that all this came after I had kidney colic that I suffered a few months before and that, because of the medication the doctors gave me, I began to have strange symptoms (side pain, blurred vision, etc.). These types of symptoms began to worry me in an exaggerated way and I ended up believing that I was still sick. When I was 100 percent guaranteed by the doctors that everything was fine, there was something inside me that started to crack and generate panic attacks that put me straight in the hands of a psychiatrist. I wanted to go back to being like I was before and stop suffering. Through therapy, we managed to understand what was happening to me: the trauma of the loss of my mother, came back in that year, mixed up with the crisis of the 40s. Fortunately, the panic attacks disappeared and the anxiety diminished. Putting myself in the hands of a psychiatrist was the way to face my mental state. Nothing was the same again but it did start a new path for me. I came out much more strengthened by living that horrible experience since I got to know myself a little better and I was able to face milder moments of anxiety, through meditation, sports and, above all, photography.

This photographic series does not talk about violence but about how I felt inside when I experienced strong anxiety. Something breaks inside of you and slaps you as I symbolically show in this series.

Talking to the models about what was trying to portrait with these series was also very therapeutic. No body was hurt and no photoshop was used to achive this effects (multiple exposure in camera).