I Thought I Could Fly: Portraits of Anguish, Compulsion, and Despair

“Evocative images, eloquent testimony—a frank and often inspiring exploration of the experience of mental illness.”—Peter D. Kramer, author of Freud: Inventor of the Modern Mind and Listening to Prozac

A tree’s bare limbs against a grey sky, a young woman’s vintage slip, the view beneath a bridge’s span. Charlee Brodsky’s stark black-and-white photographs combine with a concise collection of moving personal narratives to form an eloquent ensemble of tragedy and hope in the struggle to cope with mental illness.

Charlee Brodsky is a documentary photographer and a professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University.