BUTTERFLIES / CHAPTER 4

  • Dates
    2010 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Topics Portrait, Contemporary Issues, Documentary

BUTTERFLIES CHAPTER 3Butterflies is a long term and global project on mental illness. This is its 4th Chapter.

Butterflies is a long term and global project on mental illness

In Ancient Greece, drifting souls were often represented by

butterflies symbols. This was a direct link to Psyche, the soul goddess, who was similarly depicted with delicate Lepidoptera wings. When looking for a title for my work on the mental condition, I wanted a word that elevated the individuals I had met above the stale socially created traumas and stigmatisations which had ruined their lives.The word “Butterflies” soon imposed itself as an image of a delicate but radiant state of being. A description of freedom constantly terrorised by the outside world and an unstable condition made splittable by a misplaced caress. This soul vulnerability constantly immersed in fear became my main obsession while

photographing the men and women waiting in institutions or healing centers.

BUTTERFLIES CHAPTER 4

In their cages, enslaved by chains, past the other’s

indifferent abuse, apparent animals are holding onto a dying humanity. Others are dreaming of freedom through the ingestion of a primal state. All of them estranged from me but faintly linked by a raw matter that took me to them.

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