A Brother’s Life, In Photos, Shines Light On a Slumping Mental Health Care System
Louis Quail’s portrait of his big brother is loving and personal. It also speaks broadly to UK politics and funding cuts to social care.
You don’t expect — or frankly always want — to cry in public, but the first time I met Louis Quail we sat in a London coffee shop and welled up together. It was 2015, and I was scouting for projects to develop in Screen Lab*. Louis was in the advanced stages of a personal photo project about his older brother and thought my colleagues and I could help. We talked and pored over his book dummy.
Louis’ older brother Justin struggles with schizophrenia. He is an obsessive bird watcher, an artist of sorts, a loving brother to his three siblings and a boyfriend of twenty-years to his partner Jackie.
Louis’ perspective is close, respectful, poetic and conflicted. He knows his brother isn’t perfect, but he knows the mental health care systems intended to help Justin are further from perfect.
I’d looked up Quail’s previous work as a solid photojournalist and magazine photographer for leading media publications, and I especially liked his Before They Were Fallen project but none of this prepared me for Louis’ bittersweet and warming images of Justin’s life. I was overcome by a wave of emotion uncommon when I view photographs. Yet, here we were, only an hour into knowing each other, and we were tearing up together.
These images matter. Justin is also a repeated victim to a failing mental health system having been sectioned several times in his life and there is no getting away from the fact that his condition is severe. Given the shortcomings of waning oversight and care for Justin and others like him, Louis’ title for the series Big Brother is both ironic and tragic. Big Brother is a tender and brutal entry point into the complex and urgent issue of community care in the United Kingdom.
As we get to meet and know Justin through his drawings, hand-written notes, poems, police and medical records, and of course Louis’ images, we travel beyond the templates and stereotypes of a mentally troubled mind. We see a system in crisis and how it contributes to the stigma around mental illness.
You can only reach such depths if you truly know your subject. As Louis’ book is getting close to publication, we asked him a few questions about searching for a vessel for his story. Louis wants to make a different kind of impact with the work, but throughout wants most to protect and fairly represent his brother.
Liza Faktor (LF): You have been photographing your brother Justin for many years. It’s an incredibly intimate story for you. It took you some time to formulate what you want to achieve with putting the story out there. At which point did you decide to address the mental health system crisis through sharing Justin’s story?
Louis Quail (LQ): I think the first photograph used in the book is in 2011 and the last in January 2017. My mum passed away in August 2010 — this event was the catalyst. I always knew photographing Justin was a worthwhile thing to do. It took a while to understand that people might be interested in Justin’s story, and that it has potential to influence opinion. These realisations are in flux still as I feel out who exactly is interested.
LF: And as you crowdfund for the forthcoming book, too, I presume?
LQ: Very much so. Often I pick up a newspaper and the headline I read reminds me that what is playing out in the national newspapers, are playing out in Justin’s life as well. For example the cuts to social services are effectively a hidden cut to police services. If the resources are not there to support our mentally ill the police have to step in as they are the service of last resort. Crime has gone up because the police are massively overstretched dealing with other things like the mentally ill (80-percent as anecdotal evidence suggests) but also they are the ones making key choices about how to manage our mentally ill. Justin and Jackie have had to deal with control orders and injunctions recently where once the social services would have been involved before it got to this point.
LF: I know you struggled with the idea of subjecting Justin to the public eye. Have you talked to him about it and what convinced you this was the right thing to do?
LQ: I am still wary, I want Justin’s experience to be a positive one, I want him to be seen, acknowledged and valued, his story and contribution being shared should make him feel better about himself, proud. However, Justin suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. I have to be careful that he doesn’t feel too much in the spotlight or overexposed in a negative way. At the moment the world I push into and his world rarely intersect and that is fine with me. Quiet moments of acknowledgement like the email from a supporter which I read to Justin are great. I monitor this as we go. As Justin’s confidence grows and he realizes he is likely to have good experiences like receiving a letter or, the other day, meeting a guy who specializes in meditation and mental health, I can perhaps be bolder.
LF: How did you arrive at the book in its current form?
LQ: Making this book has been a journey for both me and Justin. When I started photographing Justin in 2011 it was from a sense that his story should be told, and that I had a responsibility to be the storyteller. I also wanted an excuse to spend more time with Justin at a time when we were both dealing with the loss of our mother. I’m on the third dummy now and things tend to move all the time in Justin’s life. I knew I wanted to include his medical notes to help expand our understanding of his experience, but after he started to get arrested in 2015 for misdemeanors, the police notes became key also. Getting the form right took time, using inserts, layers and gatefolds made sense as I attempted to describe the hidden parts to his life and reveal his complex story.
LF: What are your other plans around the project?
LQ: This project had to debunk shallow stereotypes that lead to the stigmatization of our most vulnerable mentally ill citizens and so to do that I needed to produce a work that had depth, and space to explore the life of Justin properly. It had to be a book. But with this source material now in place, I am now in a position to expand the content in different directions.
I am excited about the potential for drama to reach new audiences, perhaps even theatrical plays shown in training venues for folks who work with the mentally ill, social workers, nurses and even the police. A play based on Justin’s and Jackie’s life has the potential to educate an audience in a powerful and emotional way, particularly because the original source material is strong and relevant.
LQ: Exhibitions will definitely be part of this venture, the potential for outreach is there as well, but this is reliant on meeting the right people. Not all NGOs know what to do with original projects like this.
All this takes time — time for things to happen and time for me to decide what feels right.
LF: What are you hoping the response to the project would be? Have you shown the work to major mental health policy decision makers and NGOs so far?
LQ: Due to the nature of stigma and stereotyping (it makes the lives of 90-percent of mental health sufferers worse), I am hoping the public will find some time to sit down and absorb this project, in any form, whether it’s online, in a book, talk, exhibition or play.
Even though it shows Justin, warts and all, many people have been incredibly supportive. I want to take the public on a journey navigating from Justin’s ‘otherness’ at the beginning to the point where he feels like one of us by the end. The comments thus far make me realize that honesty is crucial to the project’s success.
LQ: I have been fortunate enough to have the support of many folks, many of them my inspiring photo industry colleagues and close friends, but the next step would be to reach out to a much wider audience beyond the photography community crowd. I do not think this is an easy thing to do but the book is an essential tool in my armory. It’s when I show the project in all its detail that I have the most impact on people.
Having said that, I’m struggling to reach out to health policy decision makers, going through the switchboard, even via the press centre, does not seem to get you far. I guess its all about introductions and to people who realize the power of the arts in decision making, and campaigning, and are happy to take a risk on an original art project. That’s a rare breed.
LF: How much of this work is about yours and Justin’s art and how much is about impact? What has taught How has working on this project changed you as a photographer and an artist?
LQ: When I make work, it always seems to have a social documentary dimension, so that impact is important. If you are going to spend substantial time (five to six years) on a project you damn well need to believe in it. But to get people’s attention one needs to make work powerful enough to move them, emotionally, otherwise I could just write a blog and move on. The work had to be the best it can be. Justin’s work has a role to play because it’s original and forms the centre of this whole body of work, even though he is not professionally trained there’s something compelling about his poetry and painting.
LQ: If you’re going to make work, make sure you can commit the time to it. I think I have always had potential, but life gets in the way, finding the time to make and share good work is the key. In the past I always had an eye on making a living, but this only gets you so far as a maker, once that economic incentive is jettisoned, doors open in different ways. I won the Renaissance Photography Prize this month, maybe it’s taken this long in my life to be in a position to make work which is good enough. One other thing I have learnt in recent years is that so much time is spent in disseminating the work after it is made, we have to plan for this.
Patience and stamina are words I would use if I was giving advice to students now, who want to make an impact with their work.
Big Brother is to be published as a book by Dewi Lewis and it is currently gathering matching funds on Kickstarter through October 31st.
*Screen Lab is a training and production program for cross platform documentary projects run by Screen. The Lab in London was produced and taught by Monica Allende with Liza Faktor, Shannon Ghannam, Bjarke Myrthu, Adrian Kelterborn, Ramon Pez and Ivan Sigal.
