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

I Thought I Could Fly

Portraits of Anguish, Compulsion, and Despair

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.

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ISBN
9781934137093
portrait of Charlee Brodsky
Charlee Brodsky

Charlee Brodsky, a professor of photography at Carnegie Mellon University, is a fine art and documentary photographer. Brodsky describes her work as dealing with human issues of beauty through everyday tales of life.

Brodsky exhibits her work nationally and has co-authored several books. Among her projects, her book Street, with poet Jim Daniels, won the 2007 Tillie Olson Award given by the Working Class Studies Association. In 2001, she and three others won an Emmy for their work on Stephanie, a documentary video about Stephanie Byram’s life with breast cancer. Brodsky worked with Byram to produce the book Knowing Stephanie, which was one of the American Association of University Presses’ outstanding illustrated books of 2004. With anthropologist Judith Modell Schacter, Brodsky explored Homestead, a former steel mill town. This work resulted in the book A Town Without Steel, Envisioning Homestead. Brodsky continues to walk Homestead streets, this time with writers Jim Daniels and Jane McCafferty.

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Praise for I Thought I Could Fly

A timely and engaging book that mixes both heartfelt journalism and emotionally engaging photography. I comment as [the second of three generations] with bipolar disorder and as a psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of serious and persistent mood disorders.

Dr. Suzanne Vogel-Scribilia, Former President of NAMI

With riveting images and moving words, this book provides a powerful and inspiring portrait of the far-reaching impact of mental illness in our lives today.

Devra Lee Davis, National Book Award Finalist and author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer