Butterflies Chapter V

Scott Typaldos

BUTTERFLIES

Butterflies is a long term project on mental health.

In Ancient Greece, drifting souls were often represented by butterflies symbols. This was a direct link to Psyche, the soul goddess, who was similarly depicted with delicate Lepidoptera wings. When looking for a title for my work on the mental condition, I wanted a word that elevated the individuals I had met above the stale socially created traumas and stigmatisations, which had ruined their lives. The word “Butterflies” soon imposed itself as an image of a delicate but radiant state of being. A description of freedom constantly terrorised by the outside world and an unstable condition made splittable by a misplaced caress. This soul vulnerability constantly immersed in fear became my main obsession while photographing the men and women frozen in institutions or healing centres.

Butterflies Chapter V
Philippines

If human beings get used to anything, even to others’ pain, there remains the possibility to observe and store information for a future consultation. The unconscious, which knows everything but remembers nothing, will preserve the pain, waiting for the instant in which a mending link, born from a certain kind of beauty, will become visible again.