Dramatic black-and-white images of the mentally ill have been a mainstay in photography since the early 20th century. Hundreds of photographers have documented out-of-control — and often untreated — patients trapped in mental hospitals that were often more like prisons.

In the best tradition of crusading, socially conscious journalism, showing that mistreatment sometimes led to outrage and campaigns to relieve the suffering of the mentally ill. But the French photographer Jean-Robert Dantou said those images also distorted the understanding of conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Motivated by the hospitalization and eventual suicide of a teenage friend, Mr. Dantou has spent most of the last three years studying and photographing people with mental illness.

“Most of the time, photographers have been looking only at these very short moments of tragedies,” he said. “Psychiatrists and sociologists have learned in the last 30 years that when you have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, for example, your life is very difficult during short times of crisis, but if you have it for a long time, much of your life is quite the same as anyone else’s.”

 

[For more of this story, written by James Estrin, go to http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/...7627&tntemail0=y]