Ghetto

Photographs by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

The Globalist’s PhotoGallery previously featured images from “Ghetto” depicting the Lukole Refugee Camp. This week, we feature images of the René Vallego Psychiatric Hospital in Cuba.

Photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin originally planned to photograph the psychiatric hospital of Havana — the largest asylum in the world. But the Cuban authorities never let them near the hospital.

Instead, they were sent to a small provincial asylum in the town of Camaguey, deemed more representative of the progressive Cuban medical system.

About René Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital

The photographers' work at René Vallejo Psychiatric Hospital was still highly restricted. Their chaperone was afraid that they would use the shortcomings of his hospital as political ammunition against the Cuban government.

So patients without shoes could not be photographed — unless another patient with a pair donated them. (There was plenty of shoe swapping.) Every image was vetted by the hospital director.

Much was out of bounds — like the electro-shock therapy room, which patients reported was in regular use and patient dormitories, where privacy was non-existent.

Also unacceptable was any mention of the Cuban law of peligrosidad (dangerousness). It is often used to intern homosexuals and other citizens judged to be “in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist morality.”

There were details Broomberg and Chanarin couldn’t photograph — things they heard but could not capture on film.

But over and above these difficulties was a far more subtle and problematic code of conduct to navigate — the morality of photographing madmen. Patients who are heavily medicated will do almost anything they are told in front of the camera.

Some have never been photographed before — would they understand the cultural and chemical process of taking their image?

Towards the end of their stay in Camaguey, it seemed a better idea to devise a system whereby the patients could photograph themselves. By squeezing the ball on the end of a long release cable, they could take their photograph when and how they chose.

A queue of eager patients had assembled behind the camera. After several snapped their picture, a heavy storm broke over the narrow terrace where the photographers were standing. Rainwater began pouring down the walls. There was time for one last photograph. Mario stepped forward, took hold of the release cable — and turned his back on the camera.

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin worked as the creative writers of Benetton’s COLORS magazine between August 2000 and December 2002.

Their work has been exhibited at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where they are part of the Museum’s permanent exhibition, The Africana Museum in Johannesburg, at the Florence Biennale, Italy, the National Museum of Film, Television and Photography of Great Britain and at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.