BEDLAM
Thirty five tintype images: photographic emulsion on aluminum, 8.5 x 6.5 inches.
Bedlam Statement
Click on a thumbnail to see the portfolio.
ABOUT BEDLAM:
Bedlam is a contemporary exhibition created by Robert Turney and Stephen Rachman of nineteenth-century psychiatric photography.
It consists of a series of thirty-six wet-plat photographs depicting a person known only as G.G., a patient in a New York City asylum, accompanied by recently discovered journal entries of Dr. P.E., a medical man and asylum-keeper.
Sometime during the 1850s, the doctor decided to explore the therapeutic potential of photography in dealing with mental illness, embarking on an experiment with one of his patients in order to discover whether or not the camera might be of use in curing madness.
The doctor called this experiment a “tintype cure.” The journals and the photographs work in conjunction with one another exploring the struggle between doctor and patient; the face of madness and the sane mind; faith and reason, seeing and photography.
Bedlam is available as a traveling show.
-Stephen Rachman