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Alvise Sforza Sforza Tarabochia
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Iconography
Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum: The Photobooks of the Italian Psychiatric Reform
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Alvise Sforza Sforza Tarabochia
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Iconography
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Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum: The Photobooks of the Italian Psychiatric Reform
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11
            Claustrophobic Visions of the
           Asylum: The Photobooks of the
             Italian Psychiatric Reform

                         Alvise Sforza Tarabochia



Abstract
     In this article, I compare the strategies of visual representation
employed in the two 1969 photobooks Gli esclusi (D’Alessandro-Piro) and
Morire di classe (Berengo Gardin et al.). These photobooks have been the
photographic protagonists of the reform of psychiatric health care that, fed
by the upheavals of the late 1960s, brought about the closure of psychiatric
asylums in 1978 thanks to the famous Law 180. I will specifically focus on
the representation of claustrophobic spaces in their relationship with the
bodies of inmates compared to the traditional iconography of madness.
This article aims to show that these photobooks (while employing radically
different strategies of representation) aim at providing a visual translation of
the pivotal philosophical coordinates that guided the reform of psychiatric
health care.

Keywords
    Photobook; Asylum; Psychiatry; Photojournalism; Italy; Madness; Ico-
nography




Between, vol. XI, n. 22 (novembre/November 2021)
issn: 2039-6597
doi: 10.13125/2039-6597/4649
Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum




 Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum:
             The Photobooks
    of the Italian Psychiatric Reform

                             Alvise Sforza Tarabochia



                                      Introduction
      In this article, I compare the strategies of visual representation em-
ployed in the two photobooks of 1969 Gli esclusi. Fotoreportage da un’isti-
tuzione totale (D’Alessandro-Piro 1969) and Morire di classe. La condizione
manicomiale fotografata da Carla Cerati e Gianni Berengo Gardin (Berengo
Gardin et al. 1969). These photobooks have been the photographic pro-
tagonists of the reform of psychiatric health care that, fed by the upheav-
als of the late 1960s, brought about the closure of psychiatric asylums in
1978 – through the famous Law 180. I will focus in particular on the repre-
sentation of claustrophobic spaces, its relationship with the bodies of the
inmates and how these relate to the traditional iconography of madness.
The aim of this article is to show that, even though they employ radically
different strategies of representation, these photobooks aim at translating
into visual terms the pivotal philosophical coordinates that guided the re-
form of psychiatric health care. I also aim at showing that in order to do so
they both engage with the traditional iconography of madness, either by
exploiting it or subverting it. In this article, I build on two of my preceding
works (Sforza Tarabochia 2018; 2019), to which I refer the reader for a more
comprehensive contextualisation of Gli esclusi and Morire di classe and also
for a wider review of existing scholarship on the subject. In my previous
articles, I draw more wide-ranging conclusions on each of the two photo-
books, relating them to the history of visual culture and more specifically to
the ‘phototext’ and analysing the relationship between images and textual
apparatuses. For reasons of space constraint, in the present article I will
limit my analysis to a comparison of the visual strategies employed by the
photographers vis à vis the militant stances of the reformist psychiatrists
who commissioned their work.


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                Contextual Note and Brief Review
                      of Existing Literature
      Gli esclusi. Fotoreportage da un’istituzione totale is a photobook that con-
tains 98 photos by Luciano D’Alessandro (1933-2016), a famous Neapolitan
photoreporter and photojournalist who worked with major Italian and in-
ternational magazines and newspapers such as Corriere della sera, Europeo,
Life, Le Monde, Stern, and so on. The photos in Gli esclusi are the result of
a work of photoreportage carried out in the Materdomini psychiatric insti-
tution in Nocera Superiore between 1965 and 1967. The work was com-
missioned by Sergio Piro, phenomenological and reformist psychiatrist, as
part of his anti-institutional strategy, similarly to what Basaglia was doing
in Gorizia with Berengo Gardin and Cerati for Morire di classe. Gli esclusi
was published by Il Diaframma in 1969 some weeks after Piro had been
fired because of his reformist ideas.
      Morire di classe. La condizione manicomiale fotografata da Carla Cerati e
Gianni Berengo Gardin, published by Einaudi in 1969, collects photos taken
by Carla Cerati and Gianni Berengo Gardin in the asylums of Gorizia, Co-
lorno, Florence and Ferrara. The photoreportages had been commissioned
by Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro with the overt intention of creating
an ‘anti-institutional’ photobook.
      For the purpose of this comparative analysis suffice it to mention that
in terms of scholarly work D’Alessandro’s Gli esclusi has so far been over-
shadowed by Morire di classe and received limited scholarly attention. Gli
esclusi was well-received by critics at the time (see e.g. Grassi 1969 and
Stefanile 1969). According to Cesareo, «le immagini elaborate da Luciano
D’Alessandro […] sono strumenti di indagine dell’istituzione, strumenti di
denuncia e di analisi, di mobilitazione e di lotta» (Cesareo 1981: 29).
      Several scholars have mentioned Gli esclusi in passing but no one to
date has highlighted the individuality of D’Alessandro’s photography: all
scholars who mention Gli esclusi count it together with Morire di classe as
one of the two photobooks of the reform.
      Manzoli maintains that D’Alessandro, and other photographers, such
as Berengo Gardin and Cerati, «entrano negli ospedali psichiatrici per doc-
umentarne l’orrore» (Manzoli 2004: 4). Schinaia sees in Gli esclusi the shift
from the «non detto o […] dire scandalistico» of the previous (rare) report-
ages on asylums, to the «tentativo di raccontare delle storie e di avvicinare
emotivamente l’’altro’» (Schinaia 2004: 467); D’Autilia considers both Gli
esclusi and Morire di classe as the initiators of the trend «estetico-emotivo» of



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Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



the representation of psychiatric matters in Italian photojournalism (D’Au-
tilia 2012: 342), which, according to Schinaia derives from «chiamare come
testimoni dell’esistenza manicomiale fotografi […] che […] avrebbero potuto
‘costruire’ immagini ad alta risonanza emotiva» (Schinaia 2004: 467). Accord-
ing to Russo, Gli esclusi and Morire di classe are the first Italian «fotoreportage
umanitar[i]» of the 1960s–1970s (Russo 2011: 314). Babini includes Gli esclusi
and Morire di classe in her history of Italian asylums (Babini 2009: 252-54).
Carli maintains that «se la denuncia dell’istituzione totale è uno dei tratti
caratterizzanti de Gli esclusi, la necessità della sua abolizione costituisce il leit
motif di Morire di classe» (Carli 2014: 107). The only two substantive contribu-
tions in English on Morire di classe (Foot 2015 and Forgacs 2014) move criti-
cisms I do not share to the photobook, while at the same time they mention
Gli esclusi in passing and somewhat implicitly extend their criticisms to it.
      While Gli esclusi might have been slightly overlooked by scholars,
many maintain that Morire di classe actively contributed to the reform of
psychiatric health care of 1978, to different extents and in different ways
(see for instance: Ongaro 1998; Pitrelli 2004; Manzoli 2004; Giannichedda
2005; Curti 2013). This is the main focus of Foot’s criticism. While Foot
recognises Morire di classe as co-initiator with Gli esclusi of the wave of «asy-
lum photography» (Foot 2015: 29-30), he also maintains that its influence
cannot be measured and, if anything, it has to be debunked, since the pho-
tobook only sold approximately 11,000 copies and went out of print in the
early 1980s (Foot 2015: 28). Additionally, some of the photos in Morire di
classe were taken in Gorizia, where, by the late 1960s some change was
already in progress thanks to Basaglia’s reformist work. For this reason,
Foot claims that the fact that inmates are represented in a «passive state,
a state from which many had escaped», to a certain extent re-victimisises
them «in order to serve the needs of the movement» (Foot 2015: 24). Ac-
cording to Forgacs, photography has a very limited «capacity to record any
kind of complex social information» (Forgacs 2014: 233) and photos such as
those in Gli esclusi or Morire di classe, are taken by photographers «from the
outside [who are] perhaps inevitably, intrusive» (Forgacs 2014: 239). Ulti-
mately, such images «reproduce the condition of the mentally ill person as
the object of an outsider’s curiosity. [...] The camera, and consequently the
viewer, peers into their “habitat” through a fence» (Forgacs 2014: 232).

                                        Gli Esclusi
     An initial selection of 21 of D’Alessandro’s photos was published in
1967, in the 117th issue of Popular Photography Italiana, under the title “Il


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mondo degli esclusi” (D’Alessandro 1967). The images were accompanied
by a short presentation by D’Alessandro and by an article by Piro, entitled
“Fotografia e alienità” (Piro 1967). This first selection explores, according to
the photographer D’Alessandro, the «solitudine del malato mentale, rispet-
to al suo mondo di provenienza, rispetto agli altri, una solitudine che nasce
dalla malattia» (D’Alessandro 1967: 54). This premise draws him close to
what was Basaglia’s position in his first writings, the ones that he published
before the traumatic experience of his first entrance in the asylum of Gorizia
as its director. Basaglia then considered mental illness as a «rimpicciolimen-
to» of the existential structure of the subject (Basaglia 2017a):

       Rimpicciolimento dell’“esserci” significa restringimento delle
     possibilità esistenziali verso una possibilità esistenziale ben
     determinata, non più dotata di libere possibilità ma dettata dal mondo
     (Basaglia 2017a: 57).

      D’Alessandro’s photos indeed seem to focus on shrunk subjects, who
do not entertain any relationship with each other. They focus on hands, on
silent gestures that do not express any reciprocity. In the article that accom-
panies D’Alessandro’s photos, Piro highlights this aspect and maintains
that «le mani [sono] un fatto importante spiritualmente perché permettono
di manipolare il mondo […] le mani dell’uomo che vive la sua alienità sono
mani abbandonate, inerti, contratte, violentemente aduncate […] esse par-
lano, nel loro modo occulto, il linguaggio della solitudine, dell’isolamento,
dell’abbandono, dell’impotenza a vivere […] della resa totale» (Piro 1967:
88). What is more, in the photos there is no recognition of the institutional
context, the spaces are completely absent from the representation, which
concentrates on the individual, shrunk, existences.
      Two years later, D’Alessandro releases Gli esclusi, whose subtitle, not
by chance, now refers to Goffman. Gli esclusi is a Fotoreportage da un’istituz-
ione totale, the asylum is defined as a total institution: «a place of residence
and work where a large number of like-situated individuals, cut off from
the wider society for an appreciable period of time, together lead an en-
closed, formally administered round of life» (Goffman 1961: xiii). Gli esclusi
offers a wider selection of images – 98 rather than 21, in the format of a
photobook: save for Piro’s introduction, there is no textual apparatus.
      The photos are charged with a much clearer political meaning, per-
haps also thanks to Sergio Piro’s preface, which frames them quite differ-
ently to “Il mondo degli esclusi”. «Il vuoto è stato pienamente colto nelle
immagini» ‒ writes Piro ‒ «ma questo non è il vuoto della malattia come


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Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



ineluttabile condanna biologica, è invece il vuoto che l’apatia, l’inerzia e
l’abbandono hanno creato in coloro che sono esclusi da qualunque mo-
vimento e da qualunque dinamica» (Piro 1969: no page numbers). This
is an institutional violence: «Se già lo spazio dell’uomo era ristretto dalla
sua alienità, esso viene ulteriormente ristretto dalla violenza e dall’abban-
dono» (Piro 1969: no page numbers). In 1969, the devastating effect that
internment in the asylum had on psychiatric patients had already been
acknowledged and it had a name. Burton called it «institutional neuro-
sis», whereas Basaglia called it «istituzionalizzazione», and defined it as
a «comportamento legato al processo di “rimpicciolimento” dell’io cui
il malato mentale è sottoposto dal momento del suo ingresso nell’asilo»,
which creates «un complesso sindromico che spesso può venir confuso
coi sintomi della malattia stessa: inibizioni, apatia, perdita di iniziati-
va, di interessi, ecc.» (Basaglia 2017b: 271). The «rimpicciolimento»that
Basaglia described as an effect of mental illness in his early writings is
now recognised as an effect of the institution itself, that ‘shrinks’ the sub-
ject’s existence.
      These considerations translate into the visual grammar in D’Alessan-
dro’s photos in a way that we might consider unexpected. In Gli esclusi,
much like what he had already done in “Il mondo degli esclusi”, D’Ales-
sandro omits almost entirely the spatial and institutional context. The ap-
proach remains the intimate approach of “Il mondo degli esclusi”, that
drew on artistic and portrait photography. All pictures, apart from the two
‘establishing shots’ of the male and female ward courtyards, are individual
or small group portraits. The 27 images that are not portraits are details of
hands. Differently from Morire di classe, which I will discuss shortly, there
is no textual component to caption the pictures, apart from Piro’s preface
of course. It is therefore neither in a direct message nor in establishing a
relationship between the body of the inmate and the space or the means of
physical constraint that D’Alessandro expresses the ‘existential shrinking’
that the institution imposes. On the contrary, in applying an intimistic style
reminiscent of the first photographic neorealism, D’Alessandro focuses on
expressions, gestures of the hands and the posture of bodies. The eyes of
the subjects are slightly more varied. Some look towards the lens (e.g. pp.
4, 26, 27, 37), some lean their head (e.g. pp. 7, 23), others have a distract-
ed gaze (e.g. pp. 36, 73) or are simply looking at something beyond the
frame (e.g. pp. 73, 92). Posture is less varied: when hands and gestures
are not the protagonists of the picture, the subjects are portrayed with
crossed arms or hands concealed between the legs. They are sitting, laying,
crouched (e.g. pp. 6-7, 64, 77, 86-87) (Figure 1).


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Fig. 1: Luciano D’Alessandro, two pages from Gli esclusi, pp. 6 and 7. © Archivio Lu-
ciano D’Alessandro. Courtesy of Studio Bibliografico Marini


     Their gestures and posture recall the traditional iconography of mel-
ancholy. The print Melancholia I by Dürer (1514), for instance, personifies
melancholy as an angelic woman, sitting in the position of the thinker, her
head leaning on the hand, gazing towards the emptiness beyond the frame.
In his book of emblems, the Iconologia, Cesare Ripa describes melancholy as:

        Donna, mesta, e dogliosa, di brutti panni vestita, senza alcuno
     ornamento, starà a sedere sopra un sasso, co’ gomiti posati sopra i
     ginocchi, e ambe le mani sotto ‘l mento, e vi sarà a canto un albero
     senza fronde, e frà i sassi. Fa la Malinconia nell’uomo, (il quale è un
     ritratto di tutto ‘l Mondo) quegli effetti istessi, che fà la forza del Verno
     ne gli alberi, e nelle piante, le quali, agitate da diversi venti, tormentate
     dal freddo, e ricoperti dalle nevi, appariscono secchi, sterili, nude,
     e di vilissimo prezzo, però non è alcuno, che non fugga, come cosa
     dispiacevole la conversatione de gli uomini malinconici. Vanno essi
     co’l pensiero sempre nelle cose difficili, e quei rischi cattivi, li quali
     sarebbe mera, e somma disgratia se avvenissero, essi se li fingono


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Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



      presenti, e reali, il che mostrano i segni della mestizia, e del dolore. È
      mal vestita, senza ornamento. (Ripa 1645: 384) (Figure 2)




Fig 2: Malinconia from Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, p. 384. Woodcut, Public Domain.

      Finally, we could think of the 1610 painting An Allegory of Joy and Mel-
ancholy by Abraham Janssens van Nuyssen, which portrays a bacchic and
young personification of joy in the foreground with an old woman in the
background. The old woman, who personifies melancholy, is crouched, in
the position of the thinker, crossed arms, head leaning on one of the hands,
gazing into the void.
      Traditional iconography of melancholy often overlaps with that of ace-
dia or idleness: the melancholic person (in iconography most commonly a
woman) is often acedious and idle. Ripa, in the Iconologia, describes acedia as
a «donna vecchia, brutta, mal vestita che stia a sedere et che tenghi la guancia
appoggiata sopra alla sinistra mano […] et il gomito di detta mano sia po-
sato sopra il ginocchio, tenendo il capo chino» (Ripa 1645: 6): all of these are
characteristics that overlap with his representation of melancholy (Figure 3).
      In addition to posture, D’Alessandro depicts idleness, which in Gli
esclusi is represented as caused by the institution and not as a characteristic
of mental illness, through hands and gestures. All details of hands or por-
traits in which hands are in the foreground depict the two hands of the



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Fig 3: Accidia from Cesare Ripa, Iconologia, p. 6. Woodcut, Public Domain.

same person. These rub each other, hold each other, are in the position of
prayer with outstretched or interlaced fingers (e.g. pp. 43, 47, 55). Alterna-
tively, they are depicted in gestures of suffering, anxiety or are contracted
(e.g. pp. 33, 76, 79). Only in two cases hands are depicted in communicative
gestures (pp. 32, 52) or in the act of writing (pp. 13, 14-15). The spread at
pp. 30-31 is particularly striking as it depicts old, wrinkled, hands that play
with a crumpled scrap of newspaper: a visual simile that associates the
inmate with waste, ‘dumped’ in the asylum like garbage is dumped in the
bin. Also the sequence at pages 18 and 19 is very telling (Figure 4).




Fig. 4: Luciano D’Alessandro, two pages from Gli esclusi, pp. 18 and 19. © Archivio Lu-
ciano D’Alessandro. Courtesy of Studio Bibliografico Marini


                                                                                     217
Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



     It depicts hands that pick up a used match from the ground and play
with it, evoking the ‘staff of madness’, a ubiquitous visual prop associated
with fools and madmen (see Sforza Tarabochia 2021) that often appears
in representations of melancholy. This is the case for instance in Lucas
Cranach’s 1532 painting Melancholia, in which an angelic woman casts an
empty gaze towards playing putti while distractedly carving her thin stick
(Figure 5).




Fig. 5: Lucas Cranach, Melancholie, Oil on Panel, 1532. Public Domain.

      While D’Alessandro set out to document an existential and ontolog-
ical condition – arguably common to all humans – we cannot accuse Gli
esclusi of what Barthes called, in reference to the exhibition The Family of
Man, «a ‘lyricism’ which only make the gestures of man look eternal the
better to defuse them» (Barthes 1991: 102). It’s true that D’Alessandro, by
omitting visual reference to the spaces and the specific institutional con-
text of his artistic portraits, risks making them metaphors of a universal
human condition. However, by employing traditional iconographic tropes
of melancholy and idleness to signal the context of these images, he makes
institutionalisation – rather than a generic ontological condition – evident
through the effect that it has on the bodies, on gestures and on posture. The
absence of a textual component, other than Piro’s introduction, encourages
in readers an empathetic approach, that takes them closer to the inmates
and makes them closely share their spaces.




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                             Morire di classe
      Morire di classe features a very different approach. As I have discussed
elsewhere (Sforza Tarabochia 2018), Cerati and Berengo Gardin represent
the asylum in a style that saddles photographic neorealism and Italian con-
cerned photography – which Cerati and Berengo Gardin co-initiated by
signing its manifesto publication “Fotografia di impegno civile” (Berengo
Gardin et al. 1973: unnumbered page between 18 and 19). In Morire di classe
socio-political criticism is much more patent and the photographic assem-
blage in a series displays a clear narrative intention. This is evidenced by
Cerati and Berengo Gardin’s preference for group and large group por-
traits, rather than individual ones; by the presence of pictures of structures
and wide-angle shots that portray not only people but also the contextual
space; and by the presence of photos that were not taken in the asylum
(ads, protests, etc). These contribute to the construction of a visual narrative
and a sequence montage that we could define protocinematographic – in
that it reveals the profound influence that cinema had on still photography
and on narrative more generally. The language and conventions of cinema
(e.g. assemblage in sequence as editing or different angles of shots) are
deployed to overcome the alleged stillness of photography – that Forgacs
(2014: 233) considers its most prominent limit. Such protocinematographic
elements leverage on photography’s «complex engagement with time and
movement» which goes beyond «flash photography and long exposures»
to include «all the procedures of assembly» such as «photo essay, sequenc-
es, juxtapositions, montage» (Campany 2008: 18).
      As opposed to Gli esclusi, Morire di classe features a complex textual ap-
paratus that includes citations from psychiatry textbooks, texts that criticise
psychiatry, poems, literature and theatre. Citations are formatted and laid
out in a rather varied way and are always in some kind of relationship with
the photos they caption. The association is not always immediately evident
and seems to encourage readers to develop a critical awareness and their
own interpretation. As I have argued in my previous article on the sub-
ject, unlike Gli esclusi, Morire di classe should be regarded as a ‘phototext’,
defined as a «struttura retorica, fondata sul dialogo e l’interazione […] fra
l’apparato fotografico e la parola scritta» (Carrara 2020: ch 2.1, para 9).
      Whereas Gli esclusi declaredly explores the neglect and the ‘existential
shrinking’ of those interned in the asylum, Morire di classe, on the contrary,
aims at «unmasking institutional violence» as the first (or at least a funda-
mental) step to reform psychiatry. As Basaglia and Ongaro write in their
introduction to Morire di classe:


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Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



         Ogni azione di rinnovamento nel campo specifico ha inizialmente
      questo significato: smascherare la violenza dell’istituzione psichiatrica
      […] Questo atteggiamento essenzialmente pragmatico, ha consentito
      di svelare la faccia nuda del malato mentale, al di là delle etichette
      che la scienza gli aveva imposto e delle sovrastrutture che l’istituzione
      aveva provocato (Basaglia-Ongaro 2017: 568).

      «Senza questo smascheramento», Basaglia continues in another text,
«che viene ad assumere un significato essenzialmente politico, ogni solu-
zione tecnica si riduce ad agire da copertura a problemi che non hanno
niente a che fare con la malattia e con la scienza» (Basaglia 2017c: 515).
      Psychiatry, from its earliest years, even before it was known as ‘psy-
chiatry’, has always attempted to make madness visible, and to do so it has
looked at the body of those suffering from a mental disorder. Suffice it to
mention for instance physiognomics as employed by Pinel, Esquirol and
Morison – aimed at pinning physical traits to mental disorders and impair-
ment; or the photographic archives of lunatic asylums, such as the ones of
the San Lazzaro (Reggio Emilia) or San Servolo (Venice), which visually
catalogued all patients upon admission, sometimes pinning them to their
diagnosis and sometimes comparing admission and discharge pictures.
Morire di classe inverts the relationship between tools of visualisation and
‘psychiatric power’ – as Foucault called it. Photography is no longer called
upon to make mental illness visible to the gaze of the psychiatrist. On the
contrary, it is employed as a tool to unmask, to reveal what institutional
psychiatry – traditionally practiced behind the walls and gates of the asy-
lum, far from public visibility – conceals.
      In Morire di classe, there are of course several images of neglect and
loneliness, individual or small group portraits, that do still recall tradi-
tional iconographic tropes much like Gli esclusi (see for instance pp. 10,
13, 15, 16, 18, 19). The photobooks are different for two pivotal reasons,
that evidence, in the photographic language, the two different premises of
Gli esclusi and Morire di classe. The first difference is that Morire di classe’s
images are always shot with wide-angle lenses, 35mm or 28mm. Groups
and individuals are always framed within the spatial context within which
these images are captured. What emerges is no longer only the neglect,
loneliness and desperation of the individual, but also the decrepit struc-
tures, the means of constraint, the insurmountable walls, the hospital-like
aisles. Some of the pictures in Morire di classe are lifeless images: they depict
the baths, the toilets, the empty courtyard (pp. 48, 49, 50, 52). The second
difference is that all pictures but one in Morire di classe are taken at the level


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of the eyes of the subjects portrayed, whereas in Gli esclusi several images
are high-angle, plongée shots. High-angle shots put the photographed sub-
ject in a subordinate position to the photographer, or, at least, they sug-
gest a shrinking of the subject. Arguably, this is controlled intentionally
by D’Alessandro, who wants to communicate in this way the ‘existential
shrinking’ that is imposed on inmates. Cerati and Berengo Gardin do not,
however, take the risk of using a visual code that, while effectively commu-
nicating the misery of the lives of those interned in the asylum, at the same
time risks putting the photographer and thus also the viewer in a position
of superiority towards patients.




Fig. 6: Carla Cerati, from Morire di classe. © Carla Cerati, courtesy Elena Ceratti.


      The only plongée shot in Morire di classe, taken by Cerati, is very import-
ant in the overall economy of the photobook (pp. 20-21) (Figure 6). The image
is paired with a citation from the Manuale per gli infermieri di ospedale psichi-
atrico by Umberto De Giacomo (1959). The citation describes what should be
done in case of bites – either by insects, animals or inmates. The subject pho-
tographed is very attentive and present, thus the reader might be left puzzled
by this association, if it is not interpreted in a contrastive manner: why would
one assume that a person should bite? In an interview released to Francesca


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Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



Orsi, Cerati herself revealed that the photographed subject actually did jump
at her and bit her, right after she had taken the picture. Cerati comments:
«io gli ho dato ragione. Come mi permettevo di fotografare uno che non era
d’accordo?» (Cerati in Orsi 2008: 176). The photo alludes to this in the photo-
graphic grammar. The photographer, having used a wide-angle lens, must
have gotten rather close, and she must have done it from above, to capture
the only plongée shot that was selected to be included in Morire di classe: a
photographic gesture that the photographer herself regards as aggressive.
     Pages 26 and 27 are another peculiar combination, that exemplifies
both the narrative and the protocinematographic approaches (Figure 7).




Fig. 7: From Morire di Classe, pp. 26-27 © Gianni Berengo Gardin, courtesy Susanna Berengo
Gardin and Alberta Basaglia


      The image on the left portrays a group of female inmates in an asylum
courtyard. They lay on the floor, crouched, crossed arms, gaze to the floor,
tattered look. One of them, crouched on the floor, is in a straitjacket. The
image on the right portrays what is probably a bourgeois soirée. A group of
elegantly dressed young people chats on a sofa in front of a marble coffee
table. They smoke and drink wine from stem glasses. Two paintings loom
over them. This picture is captioned by a citation from the play Marat/
Sade: The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as performed by the Inmates
of the Asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade by Peter
Weiss (1964). This is a complex mis-en-abyme that stages the marquis de
Sade, interned in the Charenton asylum, while he directs a play on Marat’s
assassination. The citation is an exclamation by Coulmier, the director of
the Charenton asylum, who interrupts Sade’s Marat rehearsals saying:
«Signor De Sade sono costretto a protestare / qui eravamo d’accordo di
tagliare» – «I must protest / here we agreed to cut». If we read this in pro-
tocinematographic terms this sentence binds very clearly the two pictures.


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Foucault, one of the main points of reference to Basaglia and to critics of
institutional psychiatry, had hypothesised that internment in the asylum
ultimately served the purpose of maintaining the bourgeois social order,
through the removal from society of unproductive individuals. This seems
to be the reason for Coulmier’s protest in the context of Morire di classe: the
photographers decide to ‘cut’ from the asylum courtyard to the bourgeois
soiree, revealing that these are two sides of the same coin. But this, says the
fictional director of the Charenton asylum, should not have been revealed
– the film should have been ‘cut’ before revealing that psychiatry serves the
purpose of maintaining the bourgeois social order.
      Gli esclusi focuses on the signs that madness and internment in the
asylum leave on the bodies of inmates – expressions, gestures, posture. In
Morire di classe the signs of madness and segregation are external, to empha-
sise the marginalisation of inmates and their social conditions of being re-
jects of society – «relitti, bucce di uomini» says Rilke in his Quaderni as
quoted in Morire di classe. Numerous photographs are taken from behind a
fence (e.g. p. 16), gate (e.g. p. 59) or bars (e.g. p. 61). Images often reveal tall
(and decrepit) walls behind the inmates (e.g. p. 15). The condition of mad-
ness is that of being caged or imprisoned, segregated, marginalised. In his
paintings, Goya had already used a similar strategy of visual composition
to convey a comparable meaning. For instance, in La casa de locos (1812-1819)




Fig. 8: Francisco de Goya, La casa de locos, Oil on panel, 1812. Public Domain.


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Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum



(Figure 8) we can see that the whole upper half of the painting is a wall, with
a window with bars, whereas in the Corral de locos (1794 ca) the central por-
tion is entirely occupied by a featureless wall that separates the lunatics
(bottom third) from the light (upper third).
      To conclude, Gli esclusi and Morire di classe visually contribute to the
cultural climate that surrounds the Italian psychiatric reform between the
1960s and 1970s and they do so in different ways. In Gli esclusi, D’Ales-
sandro deploys a neorealist and intimistic approach to convey the phe-
nomeno-existentialist considerations by Sergio Piro, who employed him to
document life in the asylum. Gli esclusi thus portrays the loneliness and the
individual neglect that inmates live because of the psychiatric institution –
and this adds up to the suffering created by the mental disorder. Morire di
classe, on the contrary, perhaps because it was commissioned by the very
militant Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro, takes a much clearer political
direction. Its visual grammar and its montage and assemblage strategies
show the overcoming of neorealist intimism and the opening towards con-
cerned photography. The complex narrative and communicative strategies
adopted, along with the protocinematographic editing, create a multifac-
eted narrative that aims at the unmasking of institutional psychiatry for
which Basaglia and Ongaro advocated.




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                              The Author
     Alvise Sforza Tarabochia

     Alvise Sforza Tarabochia is Senior Lecturer in Italian and Head of
the School of Cultures and Languages at the University of Kent. He has
published on Franco Basaglia and the Italian reform of psychiatric health
care, on Italian psychoanalysis and biopolitics and on the history of visual
culture. He is currently carrying out a long-term research project on the
cultural history of the visual representation of mental disorders.

     Email: a.sforza-tarabochia@kent.ac.uk



                               The Article
     Date sent: 23/05/2021
     Date accepted: 20/10/2021
     Date published: 30/11/2021



                       How to cite this article
     Sforza Tarabochia, Alvise, “Claustrophobic Visions of the Asylum:
The Photobooks of the Italian Psychiatric Reform”, Spazi chiusi. Prigioni,
manicomi, confinamenti, F. Fiorentino ‒ M. Guglielmi (eds.), Between, VIII.22
(2021): 209-227, http://www.betweenjournal.it/




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