Artwork title : Re-creation

This image comes from my photo series ‘The Lunatics’ Common Room’, an engagement with the lives, art and words of individuals who experienced detention against their will in mental hospitals, among them my uncle Hannes. In this image I am re-creating a drawing made by him when he was a small child and living in a seaside town.  Looking at his childhood artwork, I am struck by his control of line and how he filled the page and saddened by the thought that he never fulfilled his artistic potential. By recreating his work in an impermanent seaside setting, I affirm a close bond with a relative I never met while acknowledging the transient, fragile nature of that connection.

The series is driven by the need to rehumanize what has been dehumanized, to bring connection to those who have been severed from one another at the hands of institutionalization. The imagery draws upon the life, writings, and art of historic individuals, as well as the experiences of my uncle, and myself. The writers and artists to whom the photographs form a response include John Thomas Perceval, Antonin Artaud, Unica Zürn, Bessie Head, Osamu Dazai and Valérie Valère. In defiance of attempts to simply reduce or limit them to the role of madman / madwoman, it explores them as unique individuals who have something to say to us now.

The photographs are not attempts at reconstruction or diagnosis, but acts of witness, acknowledging the traces left behind and the realities still lived today. Each image is a conversation across time, a gesture of recognition between individuals whose voices have been silenced and dismissed. In bringing fragments of the past into dialogue with the present, I aim to challenge the viewer to reconsider what it means to define someone as “mentally ill", “mad,” and “other” and invite reflection on the experiences and treatment of those deemed so, then and now.

My own personal experience of being hospitalised informs this series greatly. The memories, both disorienting and clarifying, shape the way I look at those who came before me, and deepen my commitment to portraying them - and all of us who have passed through such doors - with dignity, nuance, and a reclaimed narrative. I envisage "The Lunatics' Common Room" as a shared space outside institutional boundaries, an imagined ‘room of our own’.

Digital photography - available as framed giclée print (40 x 60cm), 2025