The Icarus Diaries

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

14: Puppet

I am picturing Icarus as a choir boy, isolated against a bright background as though pulled from a lineup. Ringlets, voice still high, dressed to fit in with the chorus. The gaze is downward, uncertain, mercurial.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

13: Fire

When I was a student, Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space was our bible. It never occurred to me to look for other things he wrote and it turns out that he wrote an entire book on the psychoanalysis of fire.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

12: Scout

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

11: Propeller

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

10: Precipice

I have been thinking about Icarus’s father, Daedalus, and about the often persistent impasse between adults and adolescents that is hardly unique to Greek myth. Unspoken rivalries. Complex legacies. A parable of a different sort.

Jessica Helfand|The Icarus Diaries

09: Hullabaloo

Polyommatus Icarus is known colloquially as the common blue butterfly. Its adult lifespan lasts, on average, two to three weeks.