A PRESTWICH photographer has composed a 'letter to Manchester' celebrating the city and its people as part of Bury Mental Health Awareness Week.

Paul Feeley, aged 32, suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD) and uses photography as a form a therapy.

He was asked by Bury Involvement Group (BiG) if he would display some of his work at part of the awareness week the council is organising.

Mr Feeley will be exhibiting a video of images from around Manchester at Bury United Reform Church in Parsons Lane on Friday, May 12 as part of BiG's public drop-in session on mental health.

Mr Feeley said: "It’s not about how many likes I get I do this because it’s therapy. It helps me clear my head and see the world differently.

"It helps me see the world I don’t really know.

"With my condition I can be very erratic, I can have 50 or 60 mood swings in a day."

Mr Feeley experiences emotions very intensely, like a young child.

He added: "There are still a lot of people who will stigmatise if you suffer from a mental health condition and I've been told I belong in a padded cell.

"When you hear that it hurts. It brings you down. There's been times I have not wanted to go out but I try and rise above it and find the energy to go out and take my photographs."

He hopes his pictures will make people think twice about those living with mental health conditions, challenging the stigma surrounding mental health.

Mr Feeley said: "I do it to show my work and also to show people who don’t understand mental health problems that people are more than what society labels them. I can do what another person can do.

"I’m not my illness."