Now 58, Michael Bach has been plagued with depression for much of his life. Social stigmas prevented him from addressing it until he was 30 and suffered a breakdown shortly after completing his MFA in photography. He destroyed all of his negatives and most of his prints, vowed to never again work in photography, and instead began working as an artists’ model to make ends meet.
© Michael Bach
But ten years later, something changed. After taking antidepressants, he began seeing the world in visual terms again. “I found myself making mental pictures in my head as I observed the world before me,” Bach says. “Suddenly, the world was full of light and possibility.”
When neurological tremors short-stopped his modeling, he began making timed self-portraits with an 8×10-view camera to capture them. The resulting images—often shot in dark basements, or outside at night—are blurry and chaotic, and—to the limits of what photography is capable of capturing—give viewers a glimpse into the raw emotional and physical discomfort of Bach’s experience.
© Michael Bach
Bach’s physical debilitations recently limited his ability to shoot and process analogue film, so he’s moved to an iPhone and small digital camera, which continues to be a form of visual therapy. Bach’s iPhone photographs have a different, more off-the-cuff vibe, breaking from the staged parameters of his large-format work, but still, with brutal self-awareness and honesty, help him come to terms with his every insecurity. “They dance the fine line between the repulsion and disillusionment I feel toward my own body,” says Bach, “and the beauty I struggle to find and create in the pictures.”
© Michael Bach
Michele Usher 