Constrained Objects, 2014
A twisted toothbrush, a pipe, a trash bag, an engagement ring, perfume bottles… Jean-Robert Dantou tackles here the representations of madness with the idea that photography, always highlighting the crisis and never the everyday life, often shows monsters, rarely men. From Charcot’s photographs at the Salpêtrière at the end of the 19th century to Depardon’s reports on San Clemente, from Diane Arbus’s carnivals of madmen to Anders Peterson’s psychiatric hospitals, madmen are always drooling, twisted, banging their heads against walls, looking at us sideways and terrorizing us. Yet outside of crises, when they exist, many people described as mentally ill lead difficult but ordinary lives. This image that sticks to their skin is far removed from their daily lives.
In the first part of this work, the photographer has chosen to photograph objects that crystallize moments of decision making and that bring us into the lives of these people described as schizophrenic, bipolar, suffering from obsessive disorders or depressive syndromes. With the idea of getting out of the spectacular and circumventing the stigma, to make people appear behind these objects. The texts accompanying the images plunge us into the crucial question of the perception of dangers, acceptable risks and unacceptable risks. The photographer set up his studio in different institutions (aftercare home, clinic, psychiatric hospital) and outside, working directly with patients, relatives and caregivers on objects that made sense to them. This work is the result of several years of collaboration between the photographer Jean-Robert Dantou and a social science research team led by Florence Weber and funded by the CNSA.
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