Big Brother

Written by

Title: Big Brother
Original title: Big Brother
Author: Louis Quail
ISBN: 978-1-911306-31-3
Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing
Year: 2018
Price: CAD 65

In May 1973, a young Justin Quail accompanied his father on a birdwatching trip through the wetlands of southeastern England.

Under his father’s guidance, he made a list of the birds they saw that day: terns, grey herons, ringed plovers, sandpipers, kingfishers, reed warblers, and whitethroats. Justin watched the horizon intently, pen and paper in hand. That day in the marshes marked the beginning of a lifelong pursuit.

Several years later, when he was twenty, another event came to define the rest of his life: he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Big Brother, by Justin’s younger brother Louis Quail, is a book about his life with schizophrenia. Quail began photographing his brother shortly after the death of their mother, Clarissa, who had also been diagnosed with the condition.

Around one in four people will experience a mental health problem in their lifetime. Quail was moved to make this work about Justin by the public’s poor understanding of mental illness and the erosion of social support for those affected by it. Asked why mental health remains so little understood, he explained, “People don’t tell stories about mental health unless someone in their family has experienced it.”

Six years in the making, Big Brother is arranged in chapters that explore different aspects of Justin’s life.

Birdwatching is essential to Justin. He quickly progressed from casual enthusiast to “twitcher,” travelling in search of rare birds.

To Quail, the link between birdwatching and Justin’s emotional state is clear. “Justin developed his own form of self-treatment,” he said. “Birdwatching gave him a sense of purpose.”

Justin also fell in love, spending twenty years with a woman named Jackie, whom he called his “Pearly Queen.”

She, too, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and their relationship faced serious challenges.

When misunderstandings arose between them, for example, she had a habit of calling the police. Their arrival laid bare the troubled relationship between people with mental illness and law enforcement. Quail shows the reader a report in which terms such as “conviction,” “common assault,” and “antisocial behaviour” are used to describe his brother, a man with schizophrenia.

To a justice system devoid of compassion, Justin appears to be a violent criminal rather than a man whose mind is filled with birds, poetry, Jackie, Louis, and his own tangled thoughts.

Asked about making a book about a member of his own family, Quail said, “At the beginning, I tried to be as objective as possible.” Big Brother succeeds in documenting the story of a man diagnosed with schizophrenia while exposing the shortcomings of the social systems intended to improve his quality of life.

But it is also a story of familial love, and making the work changed the relationship between the brothers. “Justin trusted me to tell his story,” Quail said. “That was his gift to me—a powerful force for change.”

He continued, “Justin gave us something, not just his time.” A collection of his brother’s poems is pasted inside the photobook’s back cover, among them “A Tremor of Blue-Green.” In it, Justin writes: “Peace and quiet might save me, but I have to face the headwind.”

Introduction Video

The author’s introductory crowdfunding video

Note: Images are reproduced from the photobook and remain the copyright of the original creator.

Big Brother

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