It took me a long time to figure out what exactly I wanted to do as my first photo series. I was discussing with my father about literature and poetry, and we were mentioning some of our favorite writers when I thought about Antonin Artaud, a French surrealist poet who had been put into asylums and psychiatric institutions for most of his life, and whom I discovered a few years ago. Then I remembered one of his books in particular, which fascinated me because of its powerful (and beautiful) portrayal of madness. "Le Pèse-Nerfs" ("Nerve Scales") was, unlike many surrealist texts, and although sharing the same narrative structure and a common literary prose completely scattered, a dark, highly poignant book about a man's struggle to find his own self throughout anxiety crisis, schizophrenia, mental disorder and depression. At the time, I underlined many phrases written by Artaud, and it deeply moved me. Talking about Artaud to my dad made him realize that he also worked, when he was younger, in a psychiatric institution in the Eastern Townships, near Franklin and the US border. The place was called "Doréa", and I thought it was particularly strange that it formed an almost perfect anagram with the place where Artaud was sent, in France, named "Rodez". My curiosity and interest for my father's past was a reason good enough to go back with him to Doréa, and see what subsisted of the location.
It was like entering into a dead town made of ghosts. Children stopped playing and looked at us as strangers. Everything felt like if the area was haunted. The buildings of the psychiatric institution, though, remained the same, except that they had been pillaged, destroyed and vandalized. I took some photos, we spent a little time around, looking at the place. We both kept silence, but we were secretly scared of what it looked like - it looked like concentration camps. Many Duplessis Orphans were put in Doréa, declared mentally ill, and some of them suffered from ignominious treatments. My father told me the story of a group of men, found in the basement of a woman's house. They were almost all blind. The woman gave them food only a few times a day, and because they were hungry, they sometimes became aggressive and tried to kill each other. Then we left.
However, the result is still, I think, quite interesting.
I purposely created two different perspectives: one from the outside, with a cold, black and white aspect, clinically depicting a certain reality, the neglected environment made from the buildings where marginalized individuals were put since they did not correspond to the strict moral codes of our society, of "what is normal" and "what is not". The other point of view is from the inside, in the first of the "Nerve Scales" photo series. I find that it is almost like as if a patient took it. The image is in movement, it is not still, as opposed to the other ones. Almost frozen. I think it reflects what we think about madness; when we do not live with it, it appears to us as something distant, something we are afraid of, and do not want to touch or approach in any way. But when you must live with it, when you must bear the sickness, and are suffering from mental troubles, the outlook you have on things becomes dramatic.
Another inspiration, perhaps unconscious, might be from Diane Arbus' work. I read a book about her at the library, and I was shocked by her photos. She tried to photograph people on the fringe of society, especially at her time, from the 1950s to the 1970s, taking account on black and white of mentally handicapped and disabled people, transsexuals, drag queens, dwarves, giants and prostitutes, before committing suicide at the age of 48, ingesting a large quantity of barbiturates and then slashing her wrists. I maybe tried to share the same aesthetics of hers, with pictures that do not reveal themselves entirely. Arbus' photos are subject to many interpretations, and I also wanted to give the same opportunity to people who would like to see my own work. To let them try to find out what it is really about, even if it does not necessarily corresponds my point of view.
The funny thing is, I had no idea how this project would evolve before starting it. Afterwards, it seems like it would have been impossible to do anything else. What I felt reading Artaud, I tried to transpose it with images. I wanted people to be disturbed. I wanted them to have this feeling of uneasiness, to provoke an unhealthy climate with a disturbing imagery. Why? Because I am convinced that we share a lot of things with people like Artaud. Even if we are not "medically" declared so, we are all mad. We wake up every morning to go to work. We try to smile, even if the smile itself is false and artificial. We fake love. We try not to cry. We do exercise at the gym. We drive a new car. We take antibiotics. We watch television. And then we go to sleep. And everything restarts the day after. Isn't that madness? I think so. We must treat people like those who were put in Doréa in other ways that we used to, because they are our mirror, our most perfect reflection.
Photo Captions.
Nerve Scales, I. View from inside the administrative department.
Nerve Scales, II, III, VI, VII. Administrative department and cafeteria. A chapel used to be located at the left side of the building, but it entirely burned.
Nerve Scales, IV. Sick room and school. An outbuilding on extreme left.
Nerve Scales, V. "Chalets" S and R, where patients were living.
Material.
The photos were taken with a Nikon D80 and an AF-S DX 18-70mm. Colors, forms and textures were made with Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended.
For a larger view of each photo, click on the photo and you will be redirected on Flickr's website, on which you will be able to see it in many different sizes.
1 comment:
I like the way this image almost makes the surroundings look "normal". We could be looking at the back of an old farmhouse on a vast peice of land.
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