Dr Diamond’s Day Off
2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 39; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03087298.2014.1000095
ISSN2150-7295
Autores Tópico(s)Neurology and Historical Studies
ResumoAbstractHaving pioneered the use of photography as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool in portraits of his female patients at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum in the 1850s, Hugh Welch Diamond is typically remembered as the 'father of psychiatric photography'. This parochial label and the pathos of these well-known images have occluded our contemporary view of Diamond, who was regarded by his peers as one of the leaders of British photography. A recently identified album in the George Eastman House collection raises questions about our assumptions that Diamond approached photography purely in an instrumental or utilitarian way. In fact, the album suggests that at the same time as Diamond was immersed in the documentation of his patients, he was experimenting with dramatically expressive portraits in ways that forecast the work of pictorialists such as Henry Peach Robinson and Julia Margaret Cameron. The album's superabundance of portraits of women makes a compelling case for Diamond's preoccupation with the woman as muse, whether for the purposes of art or science.Keywords: Hugh Welch Diamond (1809–86)Frederick Scott Archer (1813–57)Henry Peach Robinson (1830–1901)wet collodion processamateur photographyVictorian Englandphotographic albumsart photographyphysiognomyGeorge Eastman International Museum of Photography and Film I wish to thank Christian Crouch, Susan Merriam and Eric Trudel for their comments on the draft of this article, as well as the two anonymous readers of this manuscript for their careful attention. I am most grateful to Joe R. Struble, collection manager in the Department of Photography, International Museum of Photography and Film at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, USA who first brought the 'Messy Album' to my notice. This work was supported by The National Endowment for the Humanities under Grant FT-59758-12 and by the Bard Research Fund.
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