ADHD in – Misryoum explores how an artist uses drug-altered Polaroids to visualize ADHD’s “layered” attention and calm-on-medication shift.
A diagnosis of ADHD can be hard to explain in plain language, but one series of altered Polaroid photographs offers a vivid alternative: an inside view.
For Misryoum, the most striking part of the project is how it treats attention as something visual and layered.. The artist Daniel Regan received an ADHD diagnosis last year and began taking lisdexamfetamine soon after.. In his account. medication didn’t just change symptoms. it changed perception. bringing a sense of steadier focus and reducing the mental “noise” he likened to multiple competing streams.
Insight: This kind of visual metaphor matters because it helps people who do not live with ADHD understand how attention can feel fragmented and overlapping, even when daily life looks ordinary from the outside.
Instead of stopping at personal reflection. Regan used a Polaroid camera to photograph himself and the Australian bush while hiking. then submerged the developed images in different ratios of his ADHD medication and water for an extended period.. The process physically distorts the photographs over time, turning everyday scenes into dreamlike compositions.. By working directly with the medication as part of the artistic method. he frames treatment not only as a medical step. but as a creative collaborator.
In a self-portrait. Regan’s form appears wrapped in a delicate. shroud-like texture. an effect that emphasizes fragility and being held.. In other images. greenery becomes chaotic and crowded. with bubble-like forms and vivid color shifts that echo his description of symptoms as “dials and sliders” pulled too far.. The results are not literal illustrations of ADHD, but interpretations that aim to capture emotional and perceptual character.
Insight: Even without measuring anything, turning lived experience into form can broaden public understanding, especially around conditions often reduced to stereotypes rather than personal reality.
Regan’s series is titled “C15H25N3O,” using the molecular formula associated with the medication.. One of the images that began as a self-portrait is transformed into a striking blue scene with an almost biological look. underscoring the idea that changing chemicals inside the body can reshape what the mind receives from the world.
Nature remains present. even after distortion. but it does so in a new language of luminous yellows. greens. and layered silhouettes.. The emotional undertone deepens in the final images, which also connect back to family memory.. For Regan. the altered photographs become a way to revisit questions about how earlier difficulties might be understood through the lens of a later diagnosis.
Insight: Artistic projects like this can complement scientific and clinical conversations by translating complex experiences into something people can see, feel, and discuss, which is often the first step toward better empathy and more informed dialogue.
The works are set to be exhibited at Bethlem Gallery in London as part of “(be)longing” between 22 April and 11 July 2026, placing personal perception and public awareness in the same frame.