Teaching Photography with Hysterics
2019
Digital collage, framed pigment print
27,5cm x 20cm
The series aims to break the “neutrality” of how the old camera guidebooks present women as the main subjects of photography. In the series women and other subjects in the photography guidebook drawings are replaced with the 19th century drawings of hysterics.
The series also aims to highlight the disturbing history of medical photography and the unjust role that the hysteric women had in the development of camera technology.
Hysteria was an illness concept consisting of misdiagnosed illnesses mainly affecting women. In the 19th century the consept of hysteria was manufactured and made famous through art and photographs in the Parisian hospital La Salpêtrière.
The irregular and strange symptoms of women inhabited by the hospital were merged together to create a phenomenon of hysteria that was tabulated, drawn, photographed, rehearsed and acted for the medical and artistic community. In the process of creating one of the most fascinating and famous medical phenomenon in the history, many disadvantaged women were used and left without actual care.