Amanda Tetrault: Phil & Me

Phil & Me is a daughter's use of photography to try to understand her relationship with her father and the schizophrenia that has crippled him. Amanda's father, Philip Tetrault, is a poet who has lived with schizophrenia since he attended McGill University, in Montreal, at the age of 21. As a young man, Philip was suffused with promise, hailed by Leonard Cohen in 1986 as one of the best young poets in Canada--before he slipped into yet another schizophrenic void. These photographs cover six years of sporadic meetings between Amanda and her father. Throughout, Philip had been giving her scraps of paper and napkins with verses and lines scrawled on them: some are published here. Photo booth pictures that span the past 27 years form a visual narrative thread. Philip is now a part of the streets and the shadows of Montreal. The reality of his days--moving through the caf s and parks of the city, his habitual Mickey of vodka in hand, and his acquaintances of street kids, squirrels, crows and seagulls--haunt these photographs and his poems alike.