Exhibition: The Working Life
Photographs by Residents, Staff and Neighbors of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH)

Curated by Hesther Tims, Social Worker

CAMH Exhibition dates: December 6 – 17, 2006

“We need a photo project to make a statement, to make you aware that mental health patients have a head on their shoulders.”
Project participant

“The Working Life” is the second photography project to come out of the Integrated Rehabilitation Unit (IRU), which is part of the Schizophrenia Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. For this project, 40 disposable cameras were distributed to patients of the IRU, hospital staff, and people working in our Queen Street West neighborhood. The assignment was to take photographs of work, or anything related to work. The residents of the IRU have been in the hospital for many years and are unemployed, but many would like to work. I was curious about common themes, differing viewpoints, expectations and definitions of “work.”

The creativity shown in the photos taken by artists in the community was matched by patients’ creative interpretations of the project theme: taking photos of how the TV “works” and of the elevator that is not working (again). Several staff members took the camera to their home country, showing us what work is like over there. “You have no idea of the things we go through before we get to this country,” one staff member said. The project reveals how little we really know about each other, although we meet every day and have worked together for years.

The many interconnections between marginalized people living in the hospital and the mainstream population outside of the hospital are made visible through the photographs. The variety store owners took photos of their customers, some of whom are hospital patients. A hospital patient took photos of the bakery he visits every day, where he calls the staff his “family.” This project gave patients, staff and members of the community an opportunity to discover common interests, to experience our shared humanity, to meet each other. It defied stereotypical notions about mental health patients, and will help reduce the stigma surrounding mental illness. It raises the visibility of hospital residents in our community in a positive way, and helps them gain ownership over their environment.

The project creates a space in which we can step outside of our conventional roles as staff, patient or community member and allow ourselves to be touched by these photographers’ powerful wordless images.