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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
The Benetton publication's latest issue on mental illness puts respectable newsmagazines to shame.
Jan 9, 2002 | Colors magazine is always good, but sometimes, as in the case of the December/January issue, it's one of the best periodicals on the planet. The fact that it's owned by Benetton, the clothing company that has caused occasional media dust-ups with its edgy (some say offensive, exploitative, tasteless, etc.) ad campaigns, makes the quality of the magazine's singular brand of photojournalism more remarkable still.
Say what you will about Benetton and its advertising, this current issue of Colors -- No. 47 -- is a superb photo essay. The subject is madness -- people afflicted with mental illness and how they are dealt with across the world -- from Cuba and Ivory Coast to the United States, Albania, Australia, South Africa and beyond. In addition to the photographs -- lots of them -- the story is told primarily in the words of the afflicted, often in short interviews like this one:
"What are you scared of?"
"I'm scared of the outside because Rafael is there and I don't want to see him."
"But you are Rafael."
"Now you understand what I'm scared of."
Or as free-standing quotations running across the page in large display text, such as:
"I am the devil when I'm here; I am God when I'm outside";
"Happy the normal -- those strange beings";
"They tie me up because I have episodes. In those moments my mind is blocked and I get frightened";
"Madness is to be locked in a hospital without being able to go away"; and
"Once they give you an injection, instantly you stop hearing voices."
If you've spent time in a mental hospital as a visitor, a patient or a staff member, the opening spread of Colors' madness issue will be painfully familiar. The essay begins with a photo that spans two pages: a long, green institutional hallway with a shiny linoleum floor, tile halfway up the walls and a solitary chair pushed to one side of the corridor. Over the course of 93 pages, most of which feature color photographs, we see portraits of Raquel, 77, resident of Rene Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital in Camaguey, Cuba ("It's when people call me a whore that I go mad"); several romantically involved couples who met in the Camaguey hospital and are still patients there; a man in a Sydney hospital who defines his mental illness as "bronchitis"; and a married couple who live together in a Brazilian institution ("One day after my husband and I had one too many breakdowns, he came to me and said: Leonilda, our life is finished. Let's give away our children and go live in the hospital."
Colors devotes each bimonthly issue to a single subject and publishes multilingual editions. Past issues have focused on everything from mammals, water and trash to prayer, war, toys and time. Launched by Benetton creative director Oliviero Toscani (who parted ways with Benetton in May 2000 to join Talk magazine), Colors achieved its greatest fame, perhaps, during the short period that influential designer Tibor Kalman was its editor. It was during Kalman's reign that Colors released its "What if ..." issue, in which portraits of famous people were manipulated to change their race -- such as Queen Elizabeth rendered to resemble Spike Lee.
Now edited by Renzo di Renzo and creative editors Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Colors' madness issue doesn't resort to tricks. It's just straight-ahead portraiture -- good, powerful, heartbreaking. Not to say it's joyless; it's not. There's more to madness than sorrow and desperation. The sweetest series of pictures in the issue is seven self-portraits made by patients in the Cuban hospital. The one used as the magazine's cover shows a full-length view of a pajama-clad man. His back turned, he faces a green wall. But the other patients engage the camera. Anais, 44, half-reclines on the floor and presses the cable release with a look of gentle wonder; Julio, 30, stands erect, one hand pressed to his heart; and Oreste, 24, clenches his fists and laughs.
