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Photography and radical psychiatry in Italy in the 1960s. The case of the photobook Morire di Classe (1969)
Foot, John
Foot, John
Author
Abstract
In the 1960s Franco Basaglia, the Director of a Psychiatric Hospital in a small city on the edge of Italy (Gorizia), began to transform that institution from the inside. He introduced patient meetings and set up a kind of Therapeutic Community. In 1968 he asked two photographers – Carla Cerati and Gianni Berengo Gardin – to take photos inside Gorizia and other asylums. These images were then used in a photobook called Morire di Classe (To Die Because of your Class) (1969). This article re-examines in detail the content of this celebrated book and its history, and its impact on the struggle to reform and abolish large-scale psychiatric institutions. It also places the book in its social and political context and as a key text of the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s.
Keywords
antipsychiatry, Franco Basaglia, Italy, photography, psychiatric reforms
Date
2015
Type
Journal article
Journal
History of Psychiatry
Book
Volume
26
Issue
1
Page Range
19-35
Article Number
ACU Department
Collections
Relation URI
Source URL
Event URL
Open Access Status
License
File Access
Controlled