6 TTFS Images 2d16d

This Photo Book Offers A Surrealist Window Into Mental Illness

by Zoë Naseef

 

Tara Wray, author of our photography interview series Lady Shooters, just released a new photo book called Too Tired for Sunshine (Yoffy Press). The book explores depression through photos representing life’s daily moments in a way that is both whimsical and dark. Wray utilizes absurdism and dark humor to portray the realities of mental illness.

1 TTFS Product 84833

Wray is a photographer, writer and filmmaker living in rural Vermont. She is from Kansas but considers Vermont, where she shot most of the book, to be her adopted home. The images were mostly taken between 2011 and present day. 

Although she has a background in documentary film, in 2008, Wray turned her attention to still photography. She has self-published two other photobooks, Each One Wonderful and Come Again When You Can’t Stay So Long.

In the forward to Too Tired For Sunshine, novelist Aimee Bender writes, “There’s plenty of comedy to find in here—a pizza-faced child, a deer butt between restrooms, some kind of blurry eager goat. And there’s also loneliness and abandon: the solitary oven under trees is both funny and then so sad… These images—of animals dead and alive, the woman with curlers in her hair, another standing in the back of a dump truck wearing a calm smile—become keen emotional witnesses to this broken world of ours.”

8 TTFS Images 8a4d0

The images hold a surrealist quality that keeps the viewer engaged to see what will come next. The journey that the book takes the audience through hits high and lows that visually represent mental illness as Wray experienced it.

On her Kickstarter for the book, Wray writes, “Making photographs and sharing them allows me to get outside of my head and connect more fully with the world around me. I hope this work will inspire others to discover a sense of unreality in their own world.”

Order Too Tired for Sunshine here.

1 TTFS Images 16b8a

3 TTFS Images 247d5

3 TTFS Product 10b3f

4 TTFS Images f39f4

4 TTFS Product ec7c5

7 TTFS Images 44be6

9 TTFS Images 2ee9d

10 TTFS Images 72d55

13 TTFS Images 433e5

14 TTFS Images 4a264

15 TTFS Images acc83

18 TTFS Images 2f88f

20 TTFS Images f9f9b

All images are from the book Too Tired for Sunshine and were used with permission from Tara Wray. 

More from BUST

Photographer Aline Smithson Makes The Familiar Look Beautiful And Bizzare: Lady Shooters

Photographer Vivian Fu Explore Races, Gender, And Sexuality- And Food: Lady Shooters

Photographer Jackie Dives Tells Stories That Need To Be Told: Lady Shooters

 

You may also like

Get the print magazine.

The best of BUST in your inbox!

Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter

About Us

Founded in 1993, BUST is the inclusive feminist lifestyle trailblazer offering a unique mix of humor, female-focused entertainment, uncensored personal stories, and candid reporting that tells the truth about women’s lives.

©2023 Street Media LLC.  All Right Reserved.