Synaesthesia

Our pupils dilate in an attempt to receive more of the information that intrigues us, be it light, or a stirring encounter―the expansion of a tiny black abyss. But for some, what enters through the eyes stimulates instead a sense of touch or taste. Synaesthesia is barely on the brink of existence―if you’re consulting textbooks. Ask anybody who has experienced it, however, and you’ll hear a much different story. Synaesthesia is the neurological phenomenon in which the stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to an involuntary reaction from a different sensory pathway. Hearing color, or smelling anger. A walk in the park can suddenly become a sensory barrage.

Habitually romanticized to be a whimsy of swimming colors and benevolent swathes of patterns and song, synaesthesia is hardly the carnival of fun it’s been painted to be. Often it can be an overload of stimuli, a cranial and bodily migraine, a terrible, sensual hangover. The tension that exists in discerning melting ice from clear sculpted resin. Delicate wisps of feathers taunting globs of viscous gloss―observing what could happen just as readily as what is happening. Regardless of the nature of stimuli, it is ultimately just this―sensational. Photographer Rebecca Storm visually conceptualizes the condition through juxtapositions of color, texture, and unconventionality, in an attempt to celebrate what we can learn from the blurring of our senses.