We cite from the COVER:
"Few human beings are subject to as much misunderstanding, cruelty, and neglect as the world's mentally disabled. Those who have been classified mentally ill or mentally retarded are too often abandoned or hidden away in psychiatric institutions, which are grossly overcrowded, unsanitary, and ill-staffed, and which offer little or nothing in the way of medical care, counseling, or training. The mentally retarded are housed with the mentally ill, children with adults, those who are suffering physical illnesses with those who are not. Abuses such as beatings and rapes go unreported or unchecked. In some countries the homeless, the elderly who lack families, epileptics, and petty criminals are also placed in asylums, because they have nowhere else to go."
"Confined in unheated, prison-like cells, utilizing filthy toilets, bathing in ice-cold water, heavily medicated, or wandering uncared-for through the garage-like wards, these patients live out their lives in what can only be called the shadows, their plight largely unseen and easily ignored by the rest of the world."
"Working first as a journalist, later as a volunteer for the human rights and advocacy organization Mental Disability Rights International, photographer Eugene Richards gained access to psychiatric institutions in Mexico, Armenia, Paraguay, Hungary, Kosovo, and Argentina. His wrenchingly intimate images reveal the personalities and tragic beauty of the patients and chronicle the often-inhumane treatment suffered by them. Accompanying the book, A Procession of Them, is a DVD of a short film of the same name. Directed and narrated by Richards, this unique and expressionistic film speaks of the chaos, claustrophobia, and loneliness of these hellish places."
"Collectively, the book and the film drive home the point that, when it comes to the plight of the world's mentally disabled, no one much cares. As Richards concludes, "It's as if there's a kind of worldwide agreement that once people are classified as mentally ill or mentally retarded, you're free to do to them what you want.""