Madness

In 1989, award-winning photographer Claudio Edinger was given permission to photograph the interior of Juqueri, the largest mental hospital in Latin America, and located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Living in the asylum for several weeks, returning the following year, Edinger photographed the patients — most of whom do not wear clothes — as they went about their daily rounds. The result is a boo or disturbing images which manage to bring into question one’s assumptions about the nature of madness. In his poignant introduction, Edinger recounts how seeing his own grandmother battle Alzheimers led him on his odyssey to Juqueri. Edinger hopes his book will awake people to the realities of mental suffering, and perhaps reform society’s disregard for those debilitated by it.