This series focuses on the journey through my younger brother's diagnosis of schizophrenia. The pictures were taken on the fly in an attempt to document this life-changing passage.
The title of this series is “Prodromeâ€, which refers to the early sign of mental illness development. It focuses on the journey through my younger brother's diagnosis of schizophrenia. These pictures were taken on the fly in an attempt to document this life-changing passage.
In order to record certain ephemeral moments that occured during this period and to preserve the authenticity of the moment, I chose my iPhone camera to produce these images. This allowed me to gently capture the intimacy of his recovery without disturbing it, in addition to establishing my role as a simple witness. Using my phone gave me the possibility to take those pictures without his knowledge, which is representative of his unawareness of his own condition at the time. The low quality of the images, as well as their grainy and blurred rendering, reflect and illustrate the weakness of his mental state.
Cyril was born on January 7th 1992. He is the youngest in our family of 5 children and I am the eldest. He is a very strong, intelligent young man with a beautiful and successful life ahead of him, both professionally and personally. He is an extremely hard working and visionary person who shows great perseverance. Throughout his academic career, he has been awarded numerous excellence awards and scholarships by the Polytechnic School of Montreal and he will graduate in the fall of 2016 with a degree in Chemical Engineering.
I have his free and full consent for the publication of these images.