Library Collections: Visual Still: Enlargement

Men on a bench, one waving.



Visual Still Information

Title: Christmas In Purgatory, Page 52
From: Christmas In Purgatory: A Photographic Essay On Mental Retardation
Original caption: “‘We lock these unfortunate creatures in lunatic cells, as if they were criminals,’ exclaimed Reil in 1803, ‘We keep them in chains in forlorn jails, near the roosts of owls in hidden recesses above the gates of towns, or in the damp cellars of reformatories where no sympathetic human being can ever bestow them a friendly glance, and we let them rot in their own filth. There fetters scrape the flesh from their bones, and their wan, hollow faces search for the grave that their wailing and our ignominy conceals from them.’”
Emil Kraepelin
Creator: Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan (photographer)
Date: 1974
Source: Available at selected libraries