Under the shadow of norms
Visual Essay / Illustrated Book Under the Shadow of Norms is an author-driven visual essay told through a sequence of film-still-like images. It explores alienation, anxiety, and self-perception within normative social structures through fragmented scenes, symbolic spaces, and restrained gestures rather than a linear narrative. Viewed through a lens of memory, the work examines how social expectations shape behavior, posture, and identity—how the body unconsciously extends into space, and how hesitation and small movements can resist the shapes that norms demand. Rooms become part of the narrative: objects, distances, and geometry act like a second language, revealing internalized pressure, self-surveillance, distortion, and silence as emotional residues rather than literal events. Positioned between illustration, graphic storytelling, and visual research, the book treats the page as a psychological space. Short monologues—fragments of the character’s thoughts, like a voice-over—accompany the images, inviting the reader to move through atmosphere, tension, and quiet transformation. The project was supported by the Diversity Fund of Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.