I came across this article on photographer Charlie Clift’s new portrait series, Let’s Talk, meant to spark conversations about mental health. It stood out to me because it uses the human body as a medium to display the inner thoughts of ordinary people who have experienced or are still working through mental health issues.
Perhaps this can be considered public art to the extent that it involves the public in the communication of a message – instead of being the receiver, the public (or a subset of it) is now also the medium in which the message is transmitted by.
To me, showing portraits of faces up close and personal, with their inner thoughts obstructing our view of the faces, reveals the distancing quality of mental health issues, yet reminds us that it is our fellow human beings that we are looking at, tugging at our common humanity.
