Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation by Burton BlattMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I stumbled upon this looking for works by the historian Fred Kaplan. The Fred Kaplan here is a different person, but his candid photos of institutionalized, mentally handicapped children is the affecting and indicting core of this work. As part of RFK's investigation of the state of mental health care in America's institutions. Herein are children chained, fece-stained walls and general abandonment -- "inhumanity" as we call the all-too common human behavior. It actually seems that life teaches us inhumanity is commonly human...
From the front matter:
This classic photo essay of legally sanctioned human abuse in state institutions
was written and photographed (1965) long before the current right-to-treatment
lawsuits on behalf of institutionalized people.
[...]
As Camus once wrote:
"Perhaps we cannot stop the world from being one in which children are tortured,
but we can reduce the number of children tortured."
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