Meet Lapinlahti people: Jakub Berkowits and photos about madness

Jakub Berkowits photographed himself every day for one year. The popular photography exhibition 365 KUVAA HULLUUDESTA (365 photos of madness) is available at Osasto5, Lapinlahti until 1st of December. The exhibition is a personal comeback and a comment to the mental health professionals who didn’t take Jakub seriously. The visual artist, teacher and documentarist has bipolar disorder, and getting the correct diagnosis took over 12 years.

—It feels good that people have liked the exhibition and it’s great that it has reached people. I hope it provokes thoughts and conversation. The interest towards the exhibition tells me, that the subject touches many people in one way or the other. In my project there are a lot of interwoven themes to identify with: difficult and even forbidden emotions, frustration for shouting for help without a voice, and on the other hand, small pockets of joy and black humour in the midst of a dark everyday life.

Jakub decided to photograph himself daily after he got out of a psychiatric ward and getting frustrated for not getting help. These photos gave birth to a documentary self-portrait project about a man and a mental illness—about everyday life with changing mental resources and moods.

—The project started from a need to be heard, which hadn’t happened. Even in the psyciatric ward I didn’t feel that I had been encountered humanely. I had a strong need to show and tell what I was actually feeling. I felt that my emotions and moods weren’t allowed even in treatment sessions.

—For years my life has been going from a better period to a bad one and then even worse. And because for a long time, I didn’t get help despite actively trying to, I have lost a lot during the journey, such as the possibility to do work that corresponds to my education.

I’m glad that I’m still alive

—Through this project, for the first time in a while, it has felt like I’ve managed to accomplish something again. Meaningful things in my life at the moment are photography and my family. I’m glad that I’m still alive.

­—It is tough to get proper care. Even if you got onto the correct care pathway, you might not be met. I feel like the lack of genuine encounters is a big problems. There is too much rush—for instance, giving someone a misdiagnosis—which means that you’re not truly heard and fail to receive effective treatment. I also feel that, in order to get care, you have to fit into a specific mould—a mould into which I myself never fit.

The photos and texts in the exhibition are very open and in a lot of places like cries for help. Did Jakub have challenges or hurdles in launching the exhibition?

—I have managed to gain some distance from the project itself throughout its various stages of creation, which made it easier to put it on display. These days, I look at my project from the outside, in a way. From the beginning, I worked on it with the idea that it would eventually be on display—even though, at times throughout the year, that thought slipped my mind. Of course, I didn’t dwell on that goal the whole time; I just took it one day and one photo at a time.

The fact that the exhibition is shown in the old psychiatric hospital of Lapinlahti, is meaningful to Jakub.

—There is great value in an open urban space, which Lapinlahden Lähde is. It was important to me, that my exhibition would be shown in places that are freely accessible and have a low threshold of entry. Naturally, also because of its history, Lapinlahti is a good fit for my exhibition.

Original text: Siru Valleala
Main photo: Jakub Berkowits, below an excerpt from Jakub’s texts in the exhibition

Welcome to the exhibition! Read more: 365 KUVAA HULLUUDESTA