A View from the Inside: Portraying the Experience of Mental Illness

作为一名在学术背景下工作的视觉艺术家，我建议创作一系列大型摄影肖像，这些肖像是关于患有短期精神障碍或精神分裂症等偶发性疾病的人。这些图像将挑战观众重新审视他或她对所代表的“人的类型”的想法。主题将被正常描绘，但他们所处的设置将被数字化改变，以符合每个人所描述的感知体验。这个跨学科的项目将借鉴肖像画的惯例，对那些经历精神病状态的人的内心世界的科学理解，以及受影响的个人的生活经历。我将使用数字处理来创造图像，颠覆既定的图像惯例，并在这样做的过程中，质疑传统的思维方式和与精神疾病患者的关系。精神病一词的字面意思是“精神异常状态”。它用于表示一种通常被描述为“与现实失去联系”的精神状态。精神分裂症是一组精神障碍的总称，其特征是感知、情感、行为和交流方面的长期障碍。一个人的精神病生活经验可以被视为与构成“现实”的公认概念相矛盾。事实上，“正常”的现实感的非自愿丧失是人类经验的一个方面，因为我们无法解释它，所以它仍然是耻辱的。这些照片将对我正在进行的作品项目做出重要贡献，挑战身份，主观性和“正常”之间关系的既定概念。它将建立在以前的摄影项目，如后图像（1997），“我”（1999）和皮肤（2000），与身体残疾或严重皮肤问题的人合作。作为这项新研究的结果，我创造的图像将受到历史肖像画的象征意义和风格的启发。我将提到的绘画类型的目的通常是通过展示他或她在华丽的室内或户外作为一个富有的地主来夸大和美化个人。在这些绘画中，肖像的主题是视觉上的特征，使用了一些象征和叙事元素。我工作的对象是那些在社会中发挥作用的能力受到精神疾病经历影响的人。我感兴趣的挑战是创造一系列可信的，现实的图像，揭示了一些混乱的，有时是不可理解的内心世界的人描绘。基于外貌学的信念，一个人的外表反映了他或她的主观性或“内在”身份，肖像画的传统关注是创造一个人的外部“相似性”。在描绘受试者的外部外观和内部体验时，我的目标是创造丰富而引人注目的图像，将心理健康问题带入公共领域。这些图像也将提供一种手段，公开代表那些现实感并不总是与“正常”人相一致的人的经历。

As a visual artist working in an academic context, I propose to create a series of large-scale photographic portraits of people with short-term psychotic disorders or episodic conditions like schizophrenia. These images will challenge the viewer to readdress his or her ideas about 'the type of people' represented. Subjects will be depicted normally, but the settings in which they are located will be altered digitally to coincide with the perceptual experiences described by each person. This interdisciplinary project will draw on the conventions of portraiture, on scientific understandings of the inner worlds of those who experience psychotic states and on the lived experiences of affected individuals. I will use digital manipulation to create images that subvert established pictorial conventions and, in doing so, question conventional ways of thinking about and relating to people with mental illness.The term psychosis literally means 'abnormal condition of the mind'. It is used to indicate a mental state often described as involving a 'loss of contact with reality'. Schizophrenia is a general term for a group of psychotic disorders characterized by long term disturbances in perception, affect, behaviour, and communication. A person's lived experience of psychosis could be seen to contradict accepted notions of what constitutes 'reality'. In fact, the involuntary loss of a 'normal' sense of reality is an aspect of human experience that remains stigmatized because we cannot account for it. The proposed photographs will form an essential contribution to my ongoing project of making work that challenges established conceptions of the relationships between identity, subjectivity and what is 'normal'. It will build on previous photographic projects such as After Image (1997), 'I' (1999) and Skin (2000), made in collaboration with people with physical disabilities or severe skin conditions.The imagery I create as a result of this new research will be inspired by the symbolism and style of historical portrait paintings. The purpose of the type of painting that I will refer to is usually to aggrandize and dignify the individual by showing him or her in an ornate interior, or outdoors as a wealthy landowner. In these paintings the subject of the portrait is characterized visually, using a number of symbolic and narrative elements. The subjects of my work will be people whose ability to function within society has been affected by the experience of mental illness. I am interested in the challenge of creating a series of believable, realistic images that reveal something of the chaotic and sometimes incomprehensible inner worlds of the people portrayed. Based on the physiognomic belief that a person's appearance mirrors his or her subjectivity or 'inner' identity, a traditional concern of portraiture has been to create an external 'likeness' of someone. In depicting both the external appearance and the internal experiences of the subjects, I aim to create rich and compelling images that will bring mental health issues into the public domain. These images will also provide a means of publicly representing the experiences of people whose sense of reality does not always coincide with that of 'normal' people.