The sufferance of the feet/mind

[loreta]

Today I went to the podiatrist. I saw this picture on her wall. I asked information about it. It is a picture of two feet, as you can see. This picture is from a European East photographer that took pictures of people living in psychiatric clinics in the 90's. We don't know the name of the artist. But what my podiatrist told me is very interesting: when people are very, extremely depressed or have mental illness one of the first symptoms is that they don't take care of their feet, on the contrary. Seeing this picture I wanted to cry imagining the dolor of the person, not just a physical dolor but mental also. I want to share with you these feet, mirror of a soul that is in pain.

 

[Tigersoap]

FYI

The picture is called Puppy between feet by Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950 but for over 30 years he has lived and worked in South Africa. His work as a geologist took him out into the countryside and led him to take up his camera and explore the hidden world of small South African towns.

 

[loreta]

FYI

The picture is called Puppy between feet by Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950 but for over 30 years he has lived and worked in South Africa. His work as a geologist took him out into the countryside and led him to take up his camera and explore the hidden world of small South African towns.

Thank you Tigersoap for the information. I will tell my podiatrist next time I see her the name of the artist of this picture and in what condition the picture was taken. She was mal informed about the artist and also about the context of the picture.

It is interesting to see how people are telling stories about anything that can be not true. It is fascinating to see how our reality is always based on fantasy and how objectivity is as important as air. Did my podiatrist told me the story of the clinic of psychiatry to enforce the story of how people who are sick don't take care of their feet? Did she invented a story not knowing that she was inventing a story? How many stories we hear are like this one, inventions, creations of the mind, romances, etc. Stories we want to hear, or stories we would like to ear. Or maybe she read something and it was simply not true. Who knows!

 

[Tigersoap]

It is interesting to see how people are telling stories about anything that can be not true. It is fascinating to see how our reality is always based on fantasy and how objectivity is as important as air. Did my podiatrist told me the story of the clinic of psychiatry to enforce the story of how people who are sick don't take care of their feet? Did she invented a story not knowing that she was inventing a story? How many stories we hear are like this one, inventions, creations of the mind, romances, etc. Stories we want to hear, or stories we would like to ear. Or maybe she read something and it was simply not true. Who knows!

I have no idea at all.
Perhaps that's what she was told when she bought it ? Not sure how she got it though given that the original prints are not sold outside galleries as far as I know it.
I don't know either if that story about not taking care of your feet when mentally ill or depressed has any truth in it, seems quite a weird thing to say to your client anyway :D

 

[loreta]

It is interesting to see how people are telling stories about anything that can be not true. It is fascinating to see how our reality is always based on fantasy and how objectivity is as important as air. Did my podiatrist told me the story of the clinic of psychiatry to enforce the story of how people who are sick don't take care of their feet? Did she invented a story not knowing that she was inventing a story? How many stories we hear are like this one, inventions, creations of the mind, romances, etc. Stories we want to hear, or stories we would like to ear. Or maybe she read something and it was simply not true. Who knows!

I have no idea at all.
Perhaps that's what she was told when she bought it ? Not sure how she got it though given that the original prints are not sold outside galleries as far as I know it.
I don't know either if that story about not taking care of your feet when mentally ill or depressed has any truth in it, seems quite a weird thing to say to your client anyway :D

Do you think so? She gave me some examples of people who suffered from bipolarity and when they were very, very anguished they can walk miles and miles without taking conscience of even that their feet were bleeding. I think it is something very symbolic, not taking care of your feet. I don't mean that it has to be an obsession, but feet are very important in the body, feet and head. But maybe I am wrong.

I did not feel it was weird when she told me this. On the contrary. I have very complicated feet and when I go to see a podiatrist it is taking care of my base, my equilibrium, my health. Specially my equilibrium and my energy, because I walk a lot. So I can understand that people that are very depress, and I am talking about black depression, I can understand that their internal equilibrium is not in tune, so I can also understand that they don't take care of their feet. I think it has sense.

 

[Tigersoap]

I did not feel it was weird when she told me this. On the contrary. I have very complicated feet and when I go to see a podiatrist it is taking care of my base, my equilibrium, my health. Specially my equilibrium and my energy, because I walk a lot. So I can understand that people that are very depress, and I am talking about black depression, I can understand that their internal equilibrium is not in tune, so I can also understand that they don't take care of their feet. I think it has sense.

It does make sense the way you're explaining it.
I thought that if you are suffering from certain kind of mental illness or a very heavy depression, it would perhaps be a general state of neglect if left to your own devices, not only the feet.

Happy feet then !

 

[loreta]

I did not feel it was weird when she told me this. On the contrary. I have very complicated feet and when I go to see a podiatrist it is taking care of my base, my equilibrium, my health. Specially my equilibrium and my energy, because I walk a lot. So I can understand that people that are very depress, and I am talking about black depression, I can understand that their internal equilibrium is not in tune, so I can also understand that they don't take care of their feet. I think it has sense.

It does make sense the way you're explaining it.
I thought that if you are suffering from certain kind of mental illness or a very heavy depression, it would perhaps be a general state of neglect if left to your own devices, not only the feet.

Happy feet then !

Yes, you are right also. :) A general forgiving of the entire body is a sign of a big depression. Not just feet. :)

 

[Possibility of Being]

Found the story behind Puppy between feet:

http://fr.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/picture-galleries/2010/july/01/roger-ballen-the-journey-to-boarding-house/?idx=3&idx=3

Puppy between feet (1999, Outland)

This was quite a revolutionary photograph for me personally. Prior to this photograph I’d been using an 80mm lens and I could only get so close to the subject without the subject being out of focus. When I was next in New York City I found a rolling 90mm macro lens and, returning to South Africa shortly afterwards, I used this lens for the first time to take Puppy between feet. I’d been looking at this man’s calloused feet and noticed he had a very long, distorted small toe. His feet really appealed to me in many ways - they were like a metaphor for an animal’s foot. Partly because I didn’t have the right lens, I hadn't been able to transform those feet into a photograph. So the first time I saw this man with my new lens I was really motivated to make a good photograph. For some reason, and as luck may have it, this man had some very small puppies in his house. I said ‘how shall we photograph these puppies?' and he laid down and put them between his feet. It’s a very special and very metaphoric image because the feet are shaped in such a way that they look very old and very weathered and the puppy is very new and very beautiful. At the same time it looks as though the puppy is coming out of a womb.

And the mental illness story seems not so far from the truth. From a description of the "Outland" series/book:

http://www.rogerballen.com/outland/

About the Book

Outland is the culmination of almost twenty years work for artist-photographer Roger Ballen and amounts to one of the most extraordinary photographic documents of the late twentieth century. Beginning by documenting the small ‘dorps’ or villages of rural South Africa, Ballen’s photography moved on in the late 1980s and early 1990s to their inhabitants: isolated rural whites, scarred by history, in the process of losing the privileges of apartheid which had provided them livelihoods and sustained their identity for a generation. The results were shocking, both powerful social statements and disturbing psychological studies.

Through the late 1990s and into 2000, Ballen’s work progressed again. Continuing to portray whites on the fringe of South African society, his subjects begin to act. Where previously his pictures, however troubling, fell firmly into the category of documentary photography, these pictures move into the realms of fiction. Ballen’s characters act out dark and discomfiting tableaux, providing images which are exciting and disturbing in equal measure. One is forced to wonder whether they are exploited victims, colluding directly in their own ridicule, or newly empowered and active participants within the drama of their representation. [...]

Very dark and disturbing pictures (and the video on the same page linked above) of what seems to be a very dark part of this world, even if it's overdrawn by the artist to some extent.

Thank you Loreta and Tigersoap, I didn't hear about that photographer before. I think it takes a lot of courage to look at such darkness and document it with a touch of personal sensitivity.

 

[Tigersoap]

Thanks for finding the story about the puppy picture !

 

[SummerLite]

Thank you Loreta for bringing our attention to this artist. It isn't often I see photography that has such an impact for me. A courageous person, I agree.

Possibility of Being:

I think it takes a lot of courage to look at such darkness and document it with a touch of personal sensitivity.

I have never seen Anything like this film on his website......wow! Its like a whole other world apart from this one, so dark, I agree, a nightmare really.

Aside from the feet photo above the first picture I saw on Ballens website was Sleeping Girl and I found it beautiful and so surrealistic in a pleasing way. Then I looked at the rest... A totally different impression there, to say it lightly.

Edit: The story of what has happened to these people is also fascinating, I had no idea.

 

[loreta]

Wow, this is dark, dark. Almost surrealistic. Are they real the characters in Outland? They surely are freaks and freaks can be exploited. And they are scary. Thank you Possibility of Being for all the information of this artist. This reality has many layers and some are very disturbing. And some are so disturbing that you want to fly far away! And you have to be very strong to be with them, look at them as they are or as they wanted to be seen.

Thanks also for the story of the feet and the little puppy.

 

[Deleted member 11729]

Thank you Loreta for this discovery, and thank you all for the reference to the photographer work! incredible and emotional ... they are powerfull storytelling pieces .. you see... stories, the whole world we live in is a story on a way, and here and now on earth we have a little piece of translated story of the universe, and we are like actors, or better to say, protagonists of that stories :) ... our life on earth is like a chapter from the book of life ... there was a C's session with Columbus, that kind of talks about "storytelling" nature of our world:

http://cassiopaea.org/2010/05/08/the-wave-chapter-5-perpendicular-realities-tesseracts-and-other-odd-phenomena…/

April 29, 1995

A: “Because we don’t know.” Now, why don’t we know?

Q: (L) Because we haven’t been there.

A: Had Columbus been outside of Italy and Spain?

Q: (L) Well, of course Columbus had an idea that there was something but he hadn’t been there, no. But he went and checked it out.

A: Did he have just an idea?

Q: (L) Well, pretty much, I guess.

A: Hmmm. That’s not the way we remember it. The way we remember it is that he had instinct and imagination and when he married his instinct with imagination, it became reality. And, when it became reality, he had created a reality which he was fully confident would be manifest in the physical third density reality. It wasn’t that he was confident. He knew it to be so. He didn’t stop himself by adding prejudice to the equation, which is what you are doing when you say: “Well, we don’t know what happens because we have never been there!” Think logically, please. We have told you so many times that everything is a Grand Cycle. If it’s a Grand Cycle, we have told you about circles within circles. We have told you about cycles. We have told you about short wave cycles and long wave cycles. Now, after all this information that you have asked of us, which we have more than happily given to you, would you expect that a straight line would just go out forever and ever and ever as a straight line? How could it possibly do that? What happens, if you take, on your third density earth, and you draw a straight line to the East or to the West or to the North or to the South…?

Q: (J) It comes all the way back to itself.


but that is the beuthy I like, this endless thread of the life storyline, I love to knit the story with others, looking for the facts and objective realities that are opening a new level, more deep and more forward ... you know ...

This picture is from a European East photographer that took pictures of people living in psychiatric clinics in the 90's.

I can recognize here the other "storyline" - the stereotype of Eastern Europe to be kind of oppressive with horos of "working camps" that actually were like the worst psyhiatrics clinics like Gulag or Naked Island ... where people will be taken in and stuffed with narcotics of all kind to the level of complete lose of personality and humanity and soul .. Polish documentaries made some fascinating recordings of that horrors ... to me the reference to that tels, how in America is powerfull the fear of horos of eastern europe camps where political dissidents were imprisoned ...


thank you one more time for this discovery ... amazing eye opening art!

 

[loreta]

The other day I went to a book fair, there was a young woman in a booth showing pictures and books from a sort of art school from Las Palmas. Conversing I asked her if she knew this photograph and that someone told me that his pictures were exposed in that same art school. She didn't know him, checked in her mobile who he was, effectively his pictures were exposed some 2 years ago and she started to look at the video of Outland and said: how dark....

Outland still remember me one film director and a movie but I don't remember the named of the director nor the title of the movie. I just remember that the movie was about the end of the world, the last day and some images were of an insupportable violence. Like to be in a outland, really. I was incapable to finish the movie. Movies from Australia are really strange.

 

[Deleted member 11729]

Just found this fantastic article with interview with him:

http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/november/23/ten-questions-for-photographer-roger-ballen/

"Primarily that the focus of the work is to find who I am I guess. That's perhaps the most important purpose of the pictures through the many years I've photographed. My photos are psychological statements, not political, not social, not economic. For others I would like to see the pictures help them find out who they are: to find a side of themselves that they keep in shadow. The side they refer to as 'the dark side'. "

It explains a lot what does it means to be one Artist ... it is not fancy fashionable "to be a star" project ... ;) ...

And yes there is a sense of Easter European photography in his work, and he said that he was very much inspired by the great Hungarian photographer Andre Kertesz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/André_Kertész


and this is just excellent! - thank you onemore time to find this great man!

from the interview:

" Are you aware you might view today life in a significantly different way than others do? What do you see, sitting in this café for instance? It's a very hard question because I don't know how other people see the world. But if I want I can multi-task if you want to put it that way. Sitting here I'm concentrating on the food I'm eating but if you say, 'Make a picture here Roger, how would you make a picture here, what would you do?' Then my brain goes into the mode very quickly. I often think of the Clark Kent Superman programmes I watched in the Fifties. He would be a normal person working at a newspaper then he would go into another room and become Superman. Well that's what I do nearly every day. In the morning I do the administration, meet people. When it gets to 12 o'clock everyday I put my cameras in my car and go off into a completely weird surreal world and then, when that's finished, I return to a formalistic lifestyle. I've been doing this for decades and decades now so I don't even need to push a button inside Roger's mind. It's self-automated. I don't understand the process one drop - I don't have an idea. It's just there all the time. So if you said to me make a photo in this place. I would somehow have to use my mind to find a way to create an intensity. I may all of a sudden be sitting here and remember an image from a restaurant in Afghanistan in 1973 that appears in my mind that somehow or another belongs in that chair as part of the photograph, or I may see something on the table there that fits tonally or in some other way with what's there. It's just impossible to understand how someone's mind works. I mean, who's telling me what to say now? Where's it all coming from? You can't get to the bottom of it, it's multi dimensional. When I give talks I sometimes start by saying: Where did it all start? Did I start when I came out of my mother's stomach? Did I start in my mother's stomach? Did I start somewhere else? Where is the beginning? Think of it biologically, scientifically. The beginning started two billion years ago when life began on the planet. So you're just an accumulation of that. And there were periods I guess where there was quasi life - a virus perhaps - so you're even before that."

... I am speechless with this discovery ... going to search more ... thank you

 

[loreta]

Thank you Solarmind!