Teaching Photography with Hysterics
2019
Digital collage, framed pigment print
27,5cm x 20cm
The series aims to challenge the “neutrality” of the way old camera guidebooks present women as the main subjects of photography. In the series, women and other subjects in the drawings from the photography guidebooks are replaced with 19th-century images of hysterics.
The series also aims to highlight the disturbing history of medical photography and the unjust role that hysterical women played in the development of photographic technology.
Hysteria was a concept of illness consisting of misdiagnosed conditions that mainly affected women. In the 19th century, the concept of hysteria was constructed and made famous through art and photography at the Parisian hospital La Salpêtrière.
The irregular and strange symptoms of the women housed in the hospital were merged together to create a phenomenon of hysteria that was tabulated, drawn, photographed, rehearsed, and acted out for the medical and artistic communities. In the process of creating one of the most fascinating and famous medical phenomena in history, many disadvantaged women were used and left without adequate care.