"It was not, after all, so easy to die."

Lauren E. Simonutti

Before her death in 2012, Simonutti suffered from bipolar and schizo-affective disorder, and in a short period of time from 2006 produced an incredible array of haunting photographs that reflected (and shattered into different reflections, like the mirrors that she sometime used) the mind of a woman who tried to balance the chaos of creativity with the chaos of her thoughts, and try to seemingly find a defining organizational coping mechanism in both.

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“I began to hear voices. Three of them, quite distinct. Two are taunting and the third voice is mine, as I have heard it externally, on a tape recording or answering machine. That voice has some reserve, it seldom makes itself heard. The others are a constant. They all live in my right ear which rather makes sense as I spontaneously went deaf in that ear a decade ago and it has been vacant ever since. As time and treatment progressed they have stopped screaming and contribute only a dull murmur. Except at bedtime, at bedtime they like to sing.”

~ Lauren E. Simontti

The Bat Woman by Albert Joseph Penot (1890)