Jennifer Charlton: A Hidden Community at Allanbank Arts
Jennifer Charlton’s A Hidden Community is an extremely powerful exhibition.
The ongoing project is deeply personal and explores mental health through portraiture. It has already garnered national recognition: Charlton’s tender photograph of John, a young swimmer navigating depression and grief, won her the 2024 Scottish Portrait Award (Colour).
Each photograph in the series is accompanied by the subject’s own words: stories of mental illness, misdiagnosis, grief, and the long and complex road to recovery. Though these narratives share moments of deep vulnerability, Charlton’s portraits never reduce their subjects to it. Instead, her lens captures strength, pride, resilience, and humanity.
John's story reads:
“I was bullied in school. I was lanky and smart, liked reading and got picked on for that. Then in Covid I was depressed because swimming was my outlet and the pool closed. Swimming is the only thing I want to do; I train seven times a week and I’m in the gym three or four times a week. I was feeling good then, after starting uni, my granny died and I kept feeling like I was in this hole. No matter how hard I tried to scramble out, I just kept sinking further and further. In October I tried to commit suicide.”
Reading these words beside his portrait is deeply affecting. The honesty and openness of Charlton’s collaborators is striking—and a reminder of the power of storytelling to break stigma.
For me, the portrait of Emma with her horse was especially moving. Her experience of being misdiagnosed, and of living with both ADHD and bipolar disorder, echoes parts of my own life. I make no apologies for being moved to tears. Charlton allows her subjects to be seen in full: not reduced to a diagnosis, not victims—but people with agency and presence.
A Hidden Community is a stark reminder of how far we still have to go as a society when it comes to mental health: the stigma that still surrounds diagnosis, the obscene waiting times for care, the lack of ongoing support, and the isolation people face while living through it. This exhibition does not flinch, but it also uplifts. It calls for compassion. And community.
Speaking to Charlton after viewing her show, I was struck by her passion for the work and her openness in discussing her own family’s experiences with mental illness and the driving force behind the project. I left Allanbank Arts feeling incredibly moved, and eager to see where her work goes next.
To visit A Hidden Community at Allanbank Arts, Duns, contact Jennifer Charlton directly via Instagram to book an appointment. The exhibition runs until 8 June 2025.