Re: [Leica] kyle's lost his @#$@#$! mind - week 35

[John Brownlow <john@pinkheadedbug.com>]

on 29/8/00 10:52 am, Frank Filippone at red735i@earthlink.net wrote:

> Comments and then I become silent on this picture subject....
> 
> Living or loving a deeply disturbed person gives a different perspective
> than the casual observer.  I am biased.
> 
> What so you think self mutilation is, a @#$@#$! Hobby?  The response below
> is both flippant and shows the misunderstanding that goes with psychological
> disease.  If you do not understand what it is you are photographing with
> mental illness, stay away.

It was my comment you responded to, and it wasn't in the least flippant. As
well as having self mutilating friends, including 'very close' friends, if
you get my drift, I have made four hour long films for British TV about
psychiatric patients, and the uses and abuses of psychiatry, as well as
photographing extensively with people with identified mental illnesses.  I
have been involved often for months on end with schizophrenic, psychopathic,
sociopathic and just plain screwed up people, from the mildest self-cutters
to child murderers. The idea that you just stand back and let people get on
with destroying themselves is nonsense, but so is the idea that you are some
kind of Mother Teresa who must save everyone you photograph or document.

As a result, one thing I DO understand is the role photographers or
film-makers come to play in these people's lives, and it's that of a neutral
but interested party who considers them valuable enough to photograph or
film, not as a freakshow but as a human being. The idea that I or Kyle or
anyone else is doing it for kicks or a grade on a term card is insulting.

I can tell you that out of all the people with identified mental health
problems who I have photographed, filmed or interviewed over the last 12
years, not one ever said anything except they enjoyed the experience. And
believe me, they were the kind of people who didn't have a problem about
telling you what they thought.

I will say one more thing and then I too will shut up on this topic. Cutting
yourself clearly isn't 'normal' but in my opinion to lump it with
psychiatric illness as a disease, and to assume that persons who have
reached the age of majority are not capable of making informed decisions
about what they wish to be photographed, is probably to miss at least part
of the point.

- -- 
Johnny Deadman

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com