Smithsonian magazine's 22nd Annual Photo Contest | Made possible through the support of MPB.com

21st Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest Artistic
The loneliness of the soul_Silvia Sanna

It is difficult to find the words that allow us to truly understand the reasons, and perhaps alleviate them, for the loneliness of the soul and the pain that it entails. This pain that makes us strangers to ourselves and shipwrecked in a life of anguish, sadness, despair. The solitude of the soul is the deepest, most secret and locked-in solitude within its atrocious confines. She is the bearer of aware, excruciating and painful knowledge that goes beyond the darkest part of the soul that amputates the interaction with the outside world by placing itself in front of a curtain of bewilderment, of excruciating wounds and abandonment. This condition, which corrodes the soul and swallows up all hope in an abyss of pain, closing all horizons - especially those on the future - gives us back the weariness of life and the desire for death, completely changing the vision of things and the way of being and experiencing the world. And then this lacerating loneliness, which can only be understood by those who have already experienced it, becomes an atrocious dialogue with ourselves. Violent and cruel. An introspection that digs and strips, placing us in front of a painful, wounded and melancholic human condition, forcing us to confront our despair and fragility. Becoming a source of reflection on living and dying, on events, on sensitivity and insensitivity.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 08.2020
Date Uploaded: 11.2023
Photo Location: Alghero, Italy
Camera: Canon EOS 7D Mark II
Copyright: © Silvia Sanna