For the original surrealists, the aim was not simply to create strange, dream-like imagery. Surrealism took inspiration from the ideas of Sigmund Freud, who believed that the unconscious mind harboured repressed anxieties that were ‘hidden’ from the individual. With an interest in issues of mental health, I began to develop a series of images that connect with the idea of repressed anxiety. In my photographs, I hope to create a sense of un-real narrative, in which feelings of dread and a sense of menace cloud perceptions of reality. Freud proposed the idea of unheimliche (the uncanny), wherein the familiar is felt to be strange and discomforting. This concept has been a driving force within the work.