Ciudad Juárez in Mexico frequently trumps Mogadishu as the world’s most violent city. 35km outside the city in the desert is a mental asylum run by it's own patients. These people were deposited at the asylum by family, police or border patrols. They are in trauma. They help each other. This is a beleaguered promised land populated by outcasts. An asylum from the madness. 

A city of 1.5 million where eight people are murdered daily with impunity should not herald people of light. Yet here they are - generous, kind and loving people who allowed me into their lives. Following the work of Eugene Richards and Diane Arbus in mental institutions, these portraits attempt to reveal a tender yet tough representation. They're featured alongside a diary kept while making the film between 2011-15. My approach was to embrace the alternate realities, the daily churn of tasks, the waiting, the hoping and the mystery.

Asylum from the madness

The making of the film Dead when I got here

Words and photographs by Mark Aitken

Edited by Paul Moody

201pp including 23 full colour photographs, paperback,

120g paper, 210mm x 250mm

'Told with candour, 'Asylum from the Madness' is about learning to dispense with charitable pity. It is about realising how useless our cosseted lives and values are in the face of raw survival. This book is inspiration for living that is less diluted, more essential.' 

Published by Tacit 2016

£29/€30

Available here