Has Existential Crisis (Anastasia) / Mike Harrington

*Has Existential Crisis* is a photographic exploration of women that work in the climate space and the role that compassion plays in their work. I combine portraiture with photos of the buddhist figure Kannon, who represents the concept of compassion. Because I am a cis male, I can never know what it is like as a woman or non-binary person to work in the climate justice/change space in a world that is very harsh and unfair to women and non-binary people. and I wonder why people like that do work that benefits everyone, even those that hate them and want to restrict their rights.
 
I would like to convey the power, humanity and compassion that these women (so far) display. I also want to show the faces of people that are doing this work and highlight the diversity, not only in an ethnic sense, but also a geographic sense as well. I hope to get to 25-30 different portrait series and expand the project. I also want people to see the connection between the divine figure of Kannon and these individuals. I photograph the people in similar poses to Kannon to heighten the connection between the people by photographing statues of Kannon as well. I pair the images of the people with that of the statues.