CONDEMNED – Mental Health in African Countries in Crisis
Where there is war, famine, displacement, it is the most
vulnerable that suffer the greatest.
Abandoned by governments, forgotten by the aid community,
neglected and abused by entire societies. Africans with mental illness in
regions in crisis are resigned to the dark corners of churches, chained to
rusted hospital beds, locked away to live behind the bars of filthy prisons.
Some have suffered trauma leading to illness. Others were
born with mental disability. In countries where infrastructure has collapsed
and mental health professionals have fled, treatment is often the same – a life
in chains.
I started documenting the lives of the mentally ill in
African countries in crisis in an attempt to raise awareness of their plight. I
travelled to war ravaged areas of Congo,
South Sudan, Mogadishu and Uganda. I spent
time with the displaced in refugee camps in Somalia and Dadaab. In Nigeria I went
to see the impacts of corruption on facilities for the mentally ill.
After 12 years of documenting human rights issues I’ve never
come across a greater assault on human dignity. These people are unseen and
therefore their suffering ignored (via wedrickas).
This project is being produced in the hope that no longer will ignorance be
able to be used as an excuse for inaction.
Martín Chambi, “Two Giants from Cusco” (1925) (all images courtesy of Instituto Moreira Salles)
In 1905, when the Andean photographer Martín Chambi was 14 years old, he traveled to northwestern Peru with his father, who had a job working in a gold mine there. At the time, there were no indigenous photographers in the country, and images of the Quechua people were mostly captured through the lenses of French and American photographers. But after meeting the photographer for his father’s mining company, Chambi became enamored with the camera. He soon apprenticed himself to Max T. Vargas — one of the earliest Peruvian photographers — and a legend was born.
“I’ve read that in Chile they think that the indigenous South American peoples have no culture, that they are not civilized, that they are intellectually and artistically inferior to European white peoples,” he wrote in 1936, long after he’d become a celebrated Peruvian photographer. “[My] artworks are a graphic testament that is more eloquent than my own opinion … I feel I am representing my race; my people will speak through the photographs.”
Martín Chambi, “Self-portrait of Martín Chambi looking at himself, Cusco, Peru” (1923)Martín Chambi, “The wedding of Don Julio Gadea, prefect of Cusco” (1930)Martín Chambi, “Organist in the Capela de Tinta, Sicuani” (1935)“Martín Chambi on Huayna Picchu, Machu Picchu” (1939)Martín Chambi, “Panorama of Machu Picchu” (1925)Martín Chambi, “Triunfo Street, Cusco” (1924)
