At the beginning of ‘800 was raised the issue of mental illness, considerated increasingly as disease of the nervous system, often localized in the brain.
So in European clinics and hospitals, doctors began to study the various psychiatric disorders and often they hired some photographers who had the task of documenting the appearance of the patient suffering from such diseases and the progress achieved in the treatments .
Often these pictures were attached to the notes that composed real scientific books.
So in European clinics and hospitals, doctors began to study the various psychiatric disorders and often they hired some photographers who had the task of documenting the appearance of the patient suffering from such diseases and the progress achieved in the treatments .
Often these pictures were attached to the notes that composed real scientific books.
The " madness " was not only a matter of doctors, but even of many scientists and philosophers who have devoted themselves to the study of so-called "abnormals".
The philosopher Michel Foucault taught at the Collège de France from January,1971 until his death in June 1984. The title of his chair was "History of systems of thought".
His book " Abnormals " collects the lectures of the course taught at the Collège de France in the
years 1974-1975 .
In the theory of Foucault we can find two types of power:
1.power of sovereignty is nothing more than the institutional power (such as the monarchy) that hangs over the people;
2. disciplinary power is ameshpower, not institutional, social, moral, but also individual without written rules that hangs equally on everyone. Foucault's insight is that this type of power shapes the individual in his normality or abnormality.
The disciplinary power defines what is normal and what is not. In the case of abnormality it must create a series of mechanism to get the individual normal and so we have the invention of Asylums.
Remaining in the psychiatry field is essential to quote another tool: the survey, that is a necessary element for the foundation of the idea of abnormality most of all during a trial.
The individual’s biography is studied so he starts to “resemble to the crime before having committed it”.
In the Foucault’s opinion, at the base of abnormality, there are three types of individuals: beginning was considered moral corrupted. Later the science distinguished between the “natural monster” and the “mental monster” (eg. The mad man).
2.The uncorrectable individual is the degenerated, the criminal that must be punished and recovered. His motive could come from the folly, or, if rational, from moral perversion.
3.The masturbator child. Since the XVIth century the priests considered the masturbation practice as an immoral action. The masturbation is considered a disease that provokes other illness and so it gets into a psychiatrical issue because of the behavior of the family that controls, denounces and asks for the medical aid. So the family executes the disciplinary power.
Already in the XVI century Giovanni della Porta published a manual of human physiognomy which compared human and animals characteristics.
The scholar Cesare Lombroso (1835 – 1909), has been considered the pioneer and “father” of the modern “criminal anthropology”.
His works are based on the concept of the criminal – born (individual to be corrected). In his opinion, the origin of the criminal behavior is deep inside the anatomical features of the subject, who is a physically different person compared to the normal man since he has abnormal qualities that define his criminal attitude. Subsequently, the only useful approach to the criminal is the clinical – therapeutic treatment.
In the following paragraphs we'll discuss about the two main categories of Foucault's theory: the monster and the uncorrectable. Probably I was expected to have discussed about the “masturbator child” in photography but, in my opinion, the topic is too delicate and somehow +misleading that I preferred to limit the work to the first two categories.
THE “MENTAL MONSTERS” IN PHOTOGRAPHY
The Lombroso's theories must have influenced the work of the psychiatrist Hugh Welch Diamond that was the first one who photographed in the 1850s some ill women from the Surrey County Asylum. The technique will be developed further by Albert Londe.
Diamond believed in the art of morphology (identifying somebody’s mental state by their facial expression) and used pictures of his patients to diagnose their mental condition and possibly healing their pathologies.
Diamond's work was taken a step further in the next generation by the French photographer Alber tLonde (1858–1917), whose famous 1885 series of photos of a hysterical female patient at the La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.
One commentor defined this the “invention of hysteria” the visual pathology enacted by women, often misunderstood with possession.
Diamond was also the author of other photographic genres. Nevertheless these pictures, even if realized with a medical purpose, since their intensity and aesthetic quality, represent the top of his art.
This kind of photography attracted a broad public and became a mass cultural object that later will be rediscovered by Surrealists.
The medical photographer Albert Londe (1858- 1917) developed the most outstanding scientific photography of his time.
In 1878 he was hired as a medical photographer by the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière in Paris where he studied, through the camera, the movements of human muscles and shot insane people (“the abnormals”).
His pictures of insane people are so much interesting because they are pretty different from the usal.
Since his medical research, he had the possibility to taking pictures of mad people during their insane sympthoms. Like aforementioned one of the most famous of his pictures is that one depicting the hysteria phenomenon. He documented every single step of the crisis. Undoubtedly these pictures have a huge medical worth, but, time after time, they acquired an artistic worth too.
His pictures show to the public what they've never seen before: the madness crisis and its effects.
For the first time the insane people were figuratively outside the Asylum under the eyes of everybody, the same people whom Focault's disciplinary power had confined the ill persons inside those painful places. Probably this had shocked the public at that time.
There was a slow proccess that turned this medical – research photography in something with artistic values.
In “Camera Chiara” it is stated that when someone knows that someone else is gonna takin' a picture, the shot person is not himself because he perfeclty knows he has to pose so the picture, in this case, can't reveal the real nature of the subject portraited. Viceversa when he doesn't know someone is going to shoot, he is what he is for real.
To stress this concept the author underlines that when he was leafing among the pictures of his passed – away mother he could recognised her just in one picture taken by chance when she was a child.
Even if we've to admit that the first pictures taken of lunatic people were shot for medical and scientific purposes, time after time, they started to become somehow an artistic phenomenon.
Insane people, in their madness, have something pure, they appear spontaneous because their mental state removes any inhibitions. This is probably the main reason why painters, like Gericault and Charles Le Brun, were used to represented them. Insane people, infact, have a particular twinkle in their eyes, their expression is weird and their appeal is odd. Their figures are somehow mysterious and the artists try to represent the halo of these characters. Probably nobody, either the artists, could understand who they are and what they think and this is the real essence of the mistery of representing them.
In more recent times shooting Asylums had the purpose to denounce the mistreatments and bad conditions the patients were living in.
In the 1969 the italian photographer Gianni Berengo Gardin with Carla Cerati, created a reportage called "Dying of Class" (“Morire di classe”) which tells in pictures the memorable inquiry into mental Asylums led by Franco Basaglia, contributing considerably to raise awareness about the terrible conditions of the mental illness in Italy (the pictures have been taken in Parma, Florence Ferrara and Gorizia where 350 of the patients were from ex Jugoslavia). The purpose of this work was to shock the people about the cruelty of these places, and at the same time, to promote the Basaglia' struggle to obtain a law that would permit better conditions for insane people. And also with the help of photography this could happen for real in the 1978 with the approval of the “Basaglia law” that restructered the system.
The book reported the horrible conditions of the patients dwelling in the Asylum and the photographers themselves had some difficulties to taking pictures because the nurses, once they've got the meaning of the work, asked to gave them the camera rolls, but the photographer gave them empty ones.
The pictures are extremely strong, penetrating and anguishing, they move the awarness of the observer that often could turn shocked.
They depict the humble and the lack of dignity of these human beings, both elderly and young people (even children!), mistreated and suffering that lying down on the floor or sit, desperated, on a bench with the hands over their head.
Some of them wear a straightjacket other appear like they were boring. An old man is bound at his bed, because they tied his feet. Everything inside the Asylum takes off any dignity remained.
The observer can feel the sadness and the sufferance of their eyes and inevitably gets involved into their feelings.
The pictures also represent the place where ill people are living in: everything is dirty and unhealthy. Inhuman bars fill every window, while people, willing to get out there, are screaming.
If we could compare the work of Gardin to Albert Londe's one we could realize that the subject s the same (insane people) but the puropes and results are completely different.
The pictures of Gardin are a public denounce of mistreatment, somehow are more dramatic, and move the spectator whilst the Londe's ones are more objective even though we are aware of the personal drama of the people involved, but we feel pretty far to share with them their huge pain and sufferences, somehow we're not involved into the drama like we could be into the Gardin's work.
The philosopher Michel Foucault taught at the Collège de France from January,1971 until his death in June 1984. The title of his chair was "History of systems of thought".
His book " Abnormals " collects the lectures of the course taught at the Collège de France in the
years 1974-1975 .
In the theory of Foucault we can find two types of power:
1.power of sovereignty is nothing more than the institutional power (such as the monarchy) that hangs over the people;
2. disciplinary power is ameshpower, not institutional, social, moral, but also individual without written rules that hangs equally on everyone. Foucault's insight is that this type of power shapes the individual in his normality or abnormality.
The disciplinary power defines what is normal and what is not. In the case of abnormality it must create a series of mechanism to get the individual normal and so we have the invention of Asylums.
Remaining in the psychiatry field is essential to quote another tool: the survey, that is a necessary element for the foundation of the idea of abnormality most of all during a trial.
The individual’s biography is studied so he starts to “resemble to the crime before having committed it”.
In the Foucault’s opinion, at the base of abnormality, there are three types of individuals: beginning was considered moral corrupted. Later the science distinguished between the “natural monster” and the “mental monster” (eg. The mad man).
2.The uncorrectable individual is the degenerated, the criminal that must be punished and recovered. His motive could come from the folly, or, if rational, from moral perversion.
3.The masturbator child. Since the XVIth century the priests considered the masturbation practice as an immoral action. The masturbation is considered a disease that provokes other illness and so it gets into a psychiatrical issue because of the behavior of the family that controls, denounces and asks for the medical aid. So the family executes the disciplinary power.
Already in the XVI century Giovanni della Porta published a manual of human physiognomy which compared human and animals characteristics.
The scholar Cesare Lombroso (1835 – 1909), has been considered the pioneer and “father” of the modern “criminal anthropology”.
His works are based on the concept of the criminal – born (individual to be corrected). In his opinion, the origin of the criminal behavior is deep inside the anatomical features of the subject, who is a physically different person compared to the normal man since he has abnormal qualities that define his criminal attitude. Subsequently, the only useful approach to the criminal is the clinical – therapeutic treatment.
In the following paragraphs we'll discuss about the two main categories of Foucault's theory: the monster and the uncorrectable. Probably I was expected to have discussed about the “masturbator child” in photography but, in my opinion, the topic is too delicate and somehow +misleading that I preferred to limit the work to the first two categories.
THE “MENTAL MONSTERS” IN PHOTOGRAPHY
The Lombroso's theories must have influenced the work of the psychiatrist Hugh Welch Diamond that was the first one who photographed in the 1850s some ill women from the Surrey County Asylum. The technique will be developed further by Albert Londe.
Diamond believed in the art of morphology (identifying somebody’s mental state by their facial expression) and used pictures of his patients to diagnose their mental condition and possibly healing their pathologies.
Diamond's work was taken a step further in the next generation by the French photographer Alber tLonde (1858–1917), whose famous 1885 series of photos of a hysterical female patient at the La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.
One commentor defined this the “invention of hysteria” the visual pathology enacted by women, often misunderstood with possession.
Diamond was also the author of other photographic genres. Nevertheless these pictures, even if realized with a medical purpose, since their intensity and aesthetic quality, represent the top of his art.
This kind of photography attracted a broad public and became a mass cultural object that later will be rediscovered by Surrealists.
The medical photographer Albert Londe (1858- 1917) developed the most outstanding scientific photography of his time.
In 1878 he was hired as a medical photographer by the neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière in Paris where he studied, through the camera, the movements of human muscles and shot insane people (“the abnormals”).
His pictures of insane people are so much interesting because they are pretty different from the usal.
Since his medical research, he had the possibility to taking pictures of mad people during their insane sympthoms. Like aforementioned one of the most famous of his pictures is that one depicting the hysteria phenomenon. He documented every single step of the crisis. Undoubtedly these pictures have a huge medical worth, but, time after time, they acquired an artistic worth too.
His pictures show to the public what they've never seen before: the madness crisis and its effects.
For the first time the insane people were figuratively outside the Asylum under the eyes of everybody, the same people whom Focault's disciplinary power had confined the ill persons inside those painful places. Probably this had shocked the public at that time.
There was a slow proccess that turned this medical – research photography in something with artistic values.
In “Camera Chiara” it is stated that when someone knows that someone else is gonna takin' a picture, the shot person is not himself because he perfeclty knows he has to pose so the picture, in this case, can't reveal the real nature of the subject portraited. Viceversa when he doesn't know someone is going to shoot, he is what he is for real.
To stress this concept the author underlines that when he was leafing among the pictures of his passed – away mother he could recognised her just in one picture taken by chance when she was a child.
Even if we've to admit that the first pictures taken of lunatic people were shot for medical and scientific purposes, time after time, they started to become somehow an artistic phenomenon.
Insane people, in their madness, have something pure, they appear spontaneous because their mental state removes any inhibitions. This is probably the main reason why painters, like Gericault and Charles Le Brun, were used to represented them. Insane people, infact, have a particular twinkle in their eyes, their expression is weird and their appeal is odd. Their figures are somehow mysterious and the artists try to represent the halo of these characters. Probably nobody, either the artists, could understand who they are and what they think and this is the real essence of the mistery of representing them.
In more recent times shooting Asylums had the purpose to denounce the mistreatments and bad conditions the patients were living in.
In the 1969 the italian photographer Gianni Berengo Gardin with Carla Cerati, created a reportage called "Dying of Class" (“Morire di classe”) which tells in pictures the memorable inquiry into mental Asylums led by Franco Basaglia, contributing considerably to raise awareness about the terrible conditions of the mental illness in Italy (the pictures have been taken in Parma, Florence Ferrara and Gorizia where 350 of the patients were from ex Jugoslavia). The purpose of this work was to shock the people about the cruelty of these places, and at the same time, to promote the Basaglia' struggle to obtain a law that would permit better conditions for insane people. And also with the help of photography this could happen for real in the 1978 with the approval of the “Basaglia law” that restructered the system.
The book reported the horrible conditions of the patients dwelling in the Asylum and the photographers themselves had some difficulties to taking pictures because the nurses, once they've got the meaning of the work, asked to gave them the camera rolls, but the photographer gave them empty ones.
The pictures are extremely strong, penetrating and anguishing, they move the awarness of the observer that often could turn shocked.
They depict the humble and the lack of dignity of these human beings, both elderly and young people (even children!), mistreated and suffering that lying down on the floor or sit, desperated, on a bench with the hands over their head.
Some of them wear a straightjacket other appear like they were boring. An old man is bound at his bed, because they tied his feet. Everything inside the Asylum takes off any dignity remained.
The observer can feel the sadness and the sufferance of their eyes and inevitably gets involved into their feelings.
The pictures also represent the place where ill people are living in: everything is dirty and unhealthy. Inhuman bars fill every window, while people, willing to get out there, are screaming.
If we could compare the work of Gardin to Albert Londe's one we could realize that the subject s the same (insane people) but the puropes and results are completely different.
The pictures of Gardin are a public denounce of mistreatment, somehow are more dramatic, and move the spectator whilst the Londe's ones are more objective even though we are aware of the personal drama of the people involved, but we feel pretty far to share with them their huge pain and sufferences, somehow we're not involved into the drama like we could be into the Gardin's work.
THE “NATURAL MONSTERS” IN PHOTOGRAPHY
In the history of art many photographers have investigated the “abnormals” in so many different ways. One of them is the american and neo-surrealist photographer Joel Peter Witkin.
Through his shocking photography he enhances the ugliness of the “natural monster” and deformed people described by Focault and defines a new aesthetic that refuses any kind of beauty.
His first assignment at the age of sixteen was to take a picture of a man with three legs, of a dwarf called “The Chicken Lady” and of a hermaphrodite.
He depicts the deformed bodies like they were a still life. They are perfeclty blended with every object and detail into the scene.
His images provoke embarassment, shock, repulsion,dread but also wonder and reflections.
He's really interested into the grottesque and abnormal lives of the people depicted into his pictures, revealing the sufferance of life.
His pictures have a lot of references to history of art that is crowded by “natural monsters” and mythological characters, for example, Witkin through his personal version of “Las Meninas” (a tribute to Velazquez's artwork) invites the contemporary viewer to take into account the social dimension of body deformity.
A good cult movie about the “natural monsters” is entitled “Freaks” by Tod Browning (1932) and is about some deformed people palying in a circus (http://vimeo.com/64576339). The movie is worthy to be seen for the social dimension of the deformity.
THE “UNCORRECTABLES” IN PHOTOGRAPHY
As aforementioned, Foucault, in his theory, talks also about “the uncorrectable” that is a criminal that should be punished and recovered. His actions could be moved by the madness or, if sane, by the moral perversion.
Even in the history of photography, like for the “natural monsters”, there are a lot of examples of photographs about prisoners (“uncorrectables to be recovered”).
For instance we could mention the photographs about Victorian's prisoners in the XIX century.
Most of the pictures have been concived, of course, for documental purposes.
We can observe different kind of persons inprisoned like, old men, women and even children.
Their expressions are tough and their eyes are filled by sadness, and this could make us think that this kind of photography could be investigated beyond the mere utility.
Time after time, many photographers devoted themselves to shoot prisoners, but by an artistic and dramatic point of view.
The contemporary italian photographer Valerio Bispuri realized an outstanding reportage fruit of the work of 10 years and 74 jails visited. The artwork is entitled "Encerrados, viaggio nelle carceri sudamericane” (“Encerrados, a travel into the southamerican jails”).
This time the pictures are more dramatic than the Victorian's ones, but at the same time they both are fullfilled by a common sadness that goes beyond time and space.
We can observe desperated prisoners behind the bars, hands that are comin' out from a small hole of the cell tryin' to reach something in the outer space, naked men deprived by their own dignity other having a bath. Then there are the women observing us with a desperated and an anger glance.
The pictures are devastating and painful, they move somehow the observer. They depict the anger and the lack of dignity of these human beings.
Everything is told by these dramatic images that make us feel somehow closer to the souls of prisoners and that denounce the bad conditions where they're livin' in.
Even in this case the same purpose of “Morire di classe” is achieved as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY&MEDIOGRAPHY
1. “Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1974-1975 (Lectures at the College de
France)” - Michel Focault;
2. “ORIGINE E SVILUPPO DEL CONCETTO DI ANORMALITA’ IN MICHEL FOUCAULT” - Dalila
Desirée Cozzolino;
3. “Camera Chiara” - Barthes Roland;
4. http://jubilotheque.upmc.fr/search-top-docs.html?
base=ead&mode=subset&champ1=subsetall&query1=charcot_nouv_icono_salpetriere&cop1=
AND
5. http://dacampo.altervista.org/arteepazzia/pittori%20pazzi.htm
6. http://www.repubblica.it/speciali/arte/recensioni/2013/02/27/news/elogio_alla_follia_al_
mar_di_ravenna-53529527/
7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqULuVR2ZWk
8. http://www.giornalesentire.it/2008/aprile/2828/christianfogarollifolliainfotografia.html
9. http://www.photographers.it/articoli/ilvoltodellafollia.htm
10. http://www.artribune.com/2013/03/se-la-fotografia-impazzisce/
11. http://www.luxury24.ilsole24ore.com/ArteDesign/2011/12/mapplethorpe_1.php
12. http://www.fotografiasutela.it/cento-scatti-sulla-follia/
13. http://arteesalute.blogosfere.it/2011/03/creazione-artistica-e-malattia-mentale-quale-rapporto.html
14. http://www.schizophreniaproject.org/C
15. reativity/CreativitaSchizophreniaWeb/CreaSchiz1.htm
16. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gli_anormali
17. http://www.filosofiprecari.it/wordpress/?p=1876
18. http://siblingofdaedalus.wordpress.com/2012/05/14/the-face-of-madness/
19. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso
20. http://www.cerebral-coffins.com/spk/womens-ward.html
21. http://books.google.it/books?
id=7yqTnHyTbfAC&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=Charles+Le+Brun+madness&source=bl&ots=oDIo1
NQWeX&sig=aRN9BPMatzYqqoRD7Cdm9_BxjxA&hl=it&sa=X&ei=A0OrUofSIOjoywOS3oGACw&r
edir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Charles%20Le%20Brun%20madness&f=false
22. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalmediamuseum/sets/72157632590463843/
23. http://www.musee-orsay.fr/it/collezioni/opere-commentate/fotografia/commentaire_id/ritratto-di-donna-folle-21678.html?
tx_commentaire_pi1[pidLi]=847&tx_commentaire_pi1[from]=844&cHash=699b3fd58b
24. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legge_180/78
25. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco_Basaglia
26. http://cmuscatello.blogspot.it/2008/11/morire-di-classe-basaglia-era-il-1968.html
27. http://www.scribd.com/doc/109604873/Morire-Di-Classe-La-Condizione-Manicomiale-Fotografata-Da-Carla-Cerati-e-Gianni-Berengo-Gardin-A-Cura-Di-F-e-F-Basaglia-Einaudi-1969-Ristampa
28. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Peter_Witkin
29. http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sfmetro/10.97/art1-97-10.html
30. http://interartive.org/2008/10/meninas/
31. http://www.nationalgeographic.it/fotografia/2011/09/28/foto/viaggio_nelle_carceri_suda
mericane-531055/1/#media
32. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson24.htm
33. http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freaks_%28film%29
34. http://artblart.com/tag/albert-londe/
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