Yvonne De Rosa: Crazy God

About

On 21st January 2010, Diemar/Noble Photography will open its doors to the critically acclaimed, prize-winning ‘Crazy God' by Yvonne De Rosa. The project resulted from the photographers' work as a volunteer during the 1990s in an old psychiatric hospital in Southern Italy, whose name and location remains anonymous. Six years after the asylum closed down, De Rosa returned to photograph the building and already decaying rooms and corridors, in order to document the void left by the patients. This had been a place where people were often forgotten about, where orphans, the poor and young single mothers were amongst its patients. Some had no mental health problems before they entered the hospital, but developed them inside. The result is a sensitive, touching study consisting of portraits of the objects abandoned by the patients and their wall writings in sentences that are often astonishingly lucid. This moving series displays her understanding of the space and the people who once resided there. Despite its past history, De Rosa captures a dilapidated beauty in her photographs which haunt and trigger the imagination. Born in Naples in 1975, Yvonne De Rosa was trained at the Central Saint Martins College for Art and Design in London. In 2006 she was awarded the Women in Photography International prize and her works are part of the Arco Madrid collection. She lives in London where she works as a freelance photographer. Yvonne De Rosa is currently in collaboration with Hope and Homes for Children, an international NGO, which works across Europe and Africa. In her images, she depicts the crisis of identity that can face those in abject poverty and the hardships they have to endure on daily basis. For further information, images and interviews, please contact: laura@diemarnoble.com