In the dictionary, a “disorder” is defined as “the disruption of a physical or psychological accomplishment”.
In the case of psychological disorder, the traces, on faces and bodies, are difficult to identify.
The people that photographer Julien Cadena, collaborator at Dutycaptured, as part of its exhibition In the room of the mind, at the Maison de la culture Mercier, have often themselves proposed a way to embody this disorder. A woman shows her bandaged hand, to evoke the wounds of her soul and the battles she had to wage to overcome them. Another applied a red handprint of paint to her face.
“She said that her right to speak in her community had been violated. She was prevented from speaking out. She wanted to convey this message in photos,” said the photographer in an interview.
The exhibition In the room of the mind was carried out as part of a cultural mediation project. For two years, photographer Julien Cadena visited resource centers for people suffering from mental health disorders.
The idea for this project came to him during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he wondered how people lonelier, more deprived than him, were going through this ordeal. And it is thanks to RACOR, an organization helping people suffering from mental health disorders, that Julien Cadena was able to meet the people he photographed.
“At the beginning, I went to meet these people without a camera, without a camera, really so that they could meet me so that we could discuss, so that we could talk about the project,” he says. There are many who were reluctant to have their photos taken and people talking about them. But as the process progressed, there were some who jumped in because they found it interesting. »
Julien Cadena’s project initially aimed to “destigmatize” mental health disorders and “highlight” the reality of those who experience them. In total, around fifty photos of around thirty people, accompanied by short texts, are presented at the Maison de la culture Mercier.
Some of the people photographed wrote poems to talk about their experience. “I screamed a noise called denial. I took refuge in the depths of a dark room called oblivion,” writes Mariane Nolin.
The photos are often linked to anecdotes that the models told to the photographer. Here, a man is photographed through a shard of a mirror. The photo evokes a disguise made from mirrors that he designed. Another insisted on being photographed with his mother, who takes care of him. In his hands, he holds a frame evoking his childhood.
“There are people I took photos of several times because they had so much to express. They were so interested in being in the spotlight. Others were more introverted, reserved, and not necessarily for being exposed to the public. So, there are some who wanted to be named anonymously,” continues Julien Cadena.
Some photos will focus on one person’s hand, or show another holding their head, hiding their face. Of course, these people suffer from anxiety, depression, manic-depressive disorders or schizophrenia. But over the course of meetings, Julien Cadena noticed that several of them do not focus on the diagnosis.
“Thanks to photography, we are able today to capture the very essence of emotions, and that’s what I wanted to seek out: the emotions, but also the experiences lived by these people, who according to me will be able to touch the spectators,” he says.
Some portraits are smiling, others worried.
“I also did not want to make negative, caricatured portraits of mental health. I asked them to pose naturally, whether they were smiling or sad… I put the importance of natural representation first. »
All of these people live at home and attend a community day center. There is the Montreal Parallel Learning Center workshop, which offers art workshops, the PAL Project, which suggests accommodation options, individual and collective support, the Centrami, which offers all the days of exchange, mutual aid and openness activities.
“Thanks to the RACOR network, I managed to approach many more people than I could have done alone,” says Julien Cadena.