Everyday life of a schizophrenic son

Photographer Cesar Lehovik takes pictures of his mother suffering from schizophrenia, trying to better understand the nature of her illness and destroy stereotypes in the image of the mentally ill.

Lechovik's mother, Betty, was diagnosed in 1999, when Cesar was still in college. He started photographing professionally in 2002 and decided to capture his mother to make it easier to bear this difficult family situation.

Source: American Photo"Photography allows me to observe.

I think that with the camera in my hands, I am less traumatized by what I see and how it behaves. This allows me to interpret events, and not just experience them," the photographer admits.

The Betty's Sweet Tea photo project ("Betty's Sweet Tea") is a dedication of Lechovik to his mother. In most of the pictures, she looks directly into the camera, which makes the presence of the photographer palpable in every frame. Even lying in a hospital bed, Betty looks at the camera with a half-smile and winks.

Although Lechovik caught these seemingly emotional moments, many doctors believe that schizophrenics are not able to show real intimacy in a relationship.

Therefore, when you look at these photos, you wonder whether the warmth and expressiveness of Betty's gaze is an effect created by Cesar's skillful hands, or a manifestation of real kinship between mother and son. This balance between the real and the apparent lies at the heart of Lechovik's work.

"I want the audience to stop on their way to see my mother from different angles. For example, in a diner she is angry, by the river she seems calm, and on Christmas eve, when she looks at me, wrapped in a white sweater, she is sad and beautiful. In my eyes, she expresses all this, and I want people to see these emotions in her too," the photographer explains.

Lechovik hopes that his pictures help to overcome many cliches in the depiction of mental disorders that are usually found in a photo essay — for example, the image of a woman hiding her face behind her hair, or a man with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.

"I don't want my photos to look like ordinary illustrations of depression and illness. Nevertheless, I do not try to hide the sadness and dirt that accompany her existence," says Lehovik.