© Edd Myspys

© Anca Mitroi

The word “sad” derives from the Old English word sæd, meaning full, satiated, or weighed down. For Sadness Overload, Romania-based photographers Anca Mitroi and Edd Myspys tease out this often invisible burden of grief, pin it down in photographs like a fugitive butterfly caught mid-flight.

The collaboration between Myspys and Mitroi is a unique one, defined by its own specific set of rules. They make the pictures individually, but both must give consent for each frame to be added to the series. It is ongoing, and depending upon how often the muse of sorrow visits, they might not publish new images for months at a time.

Although both artists draw their motivation from their own private mourning, they figures in the images are and are not themselves. Mitroi always places herself in the frame, and Myspys also does the same, but these are not of course who they are in real life.

Instead, their manifold heroes and heroins become the embodiments of various facets of the psyche; these are their cognitive doubles, the figures that follow them throughout daily life like a shadow, both present and intangible.

Here, their shadow selves—and indeed our own—are brought out of the dark and into the daylight, where they at long last might either be extinguished or transformed into something new. Their images could exist separately as stand-alone series, but they chose to merge them together, where they are less naked and alone.

Looking back on the Sadness Overload images can be difficult for their creatures, but it’s essential; they have been absolved of the guilt and betrayals so palpable in their pictures. Says Mitroi, “I would prefer to look away, but it is better to keep these things as lessons and references from the past.”

© Edd Myspys

© Edd Myspys

© Edd Myspys

© Anca Mitroi

© Edd Myspys

© Edd Myspys

© Anca Mitroi

© Edd Myspys

© Edd Myspys

© Edd Myspys