“Many of the teenage students I encountered seemed to be in a state of what I would call depressive hedonia. Depression is usually characterized as a state of anhedonia, but the condition I’m referring to is constituted not by an inability to get pleasure so much as it is by an inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure. There is a sense that ‘something is missing’ – but no appreciation that this mysterious, missing enjoyment can only be accessed beyond the pleasure principle.”

- Mark Fisher
“Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative?”

Depressive Hedonia

2019

Something that deeply bothers me is that feeling of incompleteness, a sort of desaturation of satisfaction penetrating parties and social gatherings. I’m talking specifically about the international student community of the late 2010s, the kind of society that has the time and resources to regularly meet, celebrate, and consume. I count myself as part of it; I consider myself a pleasure-seeker too, and I don’t want to come across as blaming anyone for enjoying themselves.

The series presented here grew out of my own need to understand a feeling I kept having - of how all these gatherings seemed to blur together in my memory, forming one long, repetitive stretch of moments that felt alienating. That’s the paradox I’m trying to explore: my friends and I genuinely believed we were living fully, doing wild and amazing things. And in many ways, we were. Who wouldn’t want to smoke weed, take drugs, dance in the streets, and feel free?

But the first time I really understood what Mark Fisher describes as “depressive hedonia” was when I looked back at my photographs from several parties hosted by friends. As I reviewed the scans, I realised what I had captured wasn’t joy or energy - but something sadder, more anxious, almost neurotic. Perhaps understandable. We are the first disillusioned generation seeing the future as a sad aftermath of failed promises.

That’s when this analog photo series began. Since then, I’ve continued to document both spontaneous and staged moments, trying to reflect that sense of being stuck in the inability to do anything else except pursue pleasure.