Nelle stanze della mente
Valerio Bispuri
My work tells the tale of mental illness today. This is the fourth chapter on freedom lost (after Encerrados, Paco and Prigionieri), continuing my extensive, in-depth study exploring the world of people hidden far from the public gaze. Venturing into the realm of mental distress is a complex, delicate and demanding experience, and the challenge of presenting it through photography is even more complex, delicate and demanding. Who are these “mad” men and women? What do they feel? In a bid to find answers to these questions, I had to become part of their universe. Their movements and expressions are lost in an inner world, often totally cut off from the surrounding environment which they may see as hostile or even terrifying, a world that can lead to self-destruction.
The starting point I chose was Africa, there where mental illness has only recently been given formal recognition. This makes it difficult to work out how many people are mentally ill, and to find where they live. Often they wander the streets of huge cities, or they can be hidden away in remote villages. Mental disorders are often seen as an evil caused by non-human, supernatural and sometimes threatening elements. This is the case in north-western Africa, in countries such as Benin, Togo and Côte d’Ivoire where voodoo witchdoctors consider the mentally ill to be demons and tie them to trees in the villages. Fortunately there are some wonderful people such as Grégoire Ahongbonon, a missionary who for the past twenty years has been working to have the mentally ill treated with dignity in special centers which he has set up.
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The first countries I visited were Zambia and Kenya, in 2018, going to mental hospitals where I saw the harsh reality of mental disorders, drug addiction and patients simply abandoned in the streets, both adults and children. In Kenya, I went to the slums of Kibera and Mathare in Nairobi. In Zambia, I went to the one and only mental hospital in Lusaka, the capital city. I saw patients locked in tiny cells, spending hours without moving, foaming at the mouth, or others left to their own devices, walking up and down the streets and trying to shelter in the markets. Some were born with mental disorders, while others have destroyed their minds with drugs. Some have suffered emotional trauma and lost all sense of space and time.
During the pandemic, I kept on working, but in Italy, at emergency departments admitting patients and prison psychiatric facilities. I would spend days with the patients, going through all the stages, from acute crisis to afternoons lounging around playing cards. The time spent without taking photos meant I got to know them, to look at them, to try and understand them.
Most recently, in 2021, I went to Benin and Togo to continue the work on Africa that is being exhibited here. I have always believed that both patience and courage are needed for photojournalists to do their job of telling stories that convey the real experience. I always wait before I take a photo. I try to fit in with the time of the person opposite me. Who is the person? What do they feel? Are they in a state of mental distress?
Valerio Bispuri
