Photographer Yospie Cardoso was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of seven, as reported by Yahoo Health. Until four years ago his life was nothing but a series of psychiatric hospital admissions. While he's been into photography for as long as he can remember, he started putting himself behind the lens, taking intimate self-portraits to give the world a closer look into his life as a man living with schizophrenia two years ago. He said, photography helps him hold on to what's real.
"It's an opportunity for me to show people my experiences," he said. "When you tell people you have schizophrenia, they immediately think you're crazy. I want people to understand and stop looking at how society looks at it." Cardoso, who has three children, says their genetic susceptibility to mental illness was the biggest inspiration for the project.
According to National Institute of Mental Health, Schizophrenia is a chronic, severe, and disabling brain disorder that has affected a lot of people throughout history. People with this disorder may hear voices other people don't hear. They may believe other people are reading their minds, controlling their thoughts, or planning to harm them. This can terrify people with the illness causing them to withdraw from society or extremely agitated.
Cardoso shared that one of his biggest fear is that his issues would be passed on to his children, so he started this as way to show them they're not alone if something happens. "I wanted to show them what their father saw." Cardoso added. He said there's more to come in the series, but he can only shoot the photos when his fiancee is there, for his own safety. He explained that when he does the photos, he gets into the world where he normally spends every day trying to fight. "For these photos I have to let go." Cardoso said.
