A new exhibit opening today reveals that simple images can open windows into the lives of the mentally ill.

        The photos in “I Have a Voice: Photographic Images by the Severely Mentally Ill,” are intelligent, instinctive, sometimes humorous.

        They help us begin to fathom how people with mental illness make sense out of their million-puzzle-piece lives.

        The exhibit is the product of the Athens Photographic Project — 25 people who used 523 rolls of color film on a “light-seeking journey toward empowerment, confidence and community,” says Barbara Rohrer, a local organizer.

        The exhibit, at Christ Church Cathedral, 318 E. Fourth St. downtown, is free to the public. It closes June 28.
       

"No community support'

        Elise Mitchell Sanford is the project's 72-year-old founder and project director. A professional photographer and teacher in Athens, Ohio, she volunteers to teach 12- to 15-week photography classes to mentally ill adults.

        Her 37-year-old son, who's under treatment for schizophrenia, is one reason the project exists, she says. Through him she saw gaps in services for the mentally ill. Help, she found, is crisis-driven, treating people from meltdown to meltdown, on an outpatient or short-term basis to “stabilize” them.

        Then, it's usually back out into the terrifying, lonely world again.

        “They often go back to the apartments they live in, by themselves, and sit alone and worry,” Ms. Sanford says. “There's no community support. It's very easy to fall through the cracks.”

        Photography helps them resurface, she says. Written words, next to the photos, tell the stories. Some of the photos are self-portraits, like the comic pose of a man attempting to kiss a rooster. Others are of inanimate objects, like the typewriter tied to a tree trunk.
       

"Now ... I keep looking up'

        One woman wrote of her photography: “I felt challenged to go places and deal with people that I would normally avoid. Now, instead of walking with my head down, I keep looking up so I don't miss the perfect shot.”

        One of those perfect shots is an ironic one: A battered-looking, but still inviting, wicker couch, in front of an old garage with a large, hand-painted “No Trespassing” sign.

        A self-portrait is a stark study in light and dark. A woman's hand blocks most of her face, but one eye stares through her fingers at the viewer.

        Photography, this woman wrote, “helped me to safely re-
       establish my voice that had been stifled for many years due to my mental illness and fear of being judged and misunderstood.”

        The exhibit fights stereotypes, Ms. Sanford says, “that mentally ill people are violent, crazy out-of-their-minds, not treatable, and can never reclaim normal lives.”

        As a tool of expression, photography reveals how some mentally ill people are better able to visualize their subconscious than people who aren't.

        Don't call it therapy. Ms. Sanford teaches art history, the use of form and light, and how to chemically develop photos.

        “I don't pretend to be a therapist. The last thing they want is more therapy. What they want is to get something normal.”

        But what is normal?

        A photo titled “Locked Up” is a close-up of a rusting padlock and chain. An image of restriction, limitations?

        Hardly. For the photographer, it shows safety, love.

        His illness sometimes makes him feel suicidal. The padlock is on his family's garage, where gasoline is stored. His father put it there to keep him safe.

       Call Denise Smith Amos at 768-8395, or e-mail damos@enquirer.com.
       

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