[Patient, Surrey County Lunatic Asylum]

Hugh Welch Diamond

1850–55 · Albumen silver print from glass negative · Photographs

As the superintendent of the Female Department of the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, Diamond was among the first to use photography to investigate the physiognomy of insanity. He photographed his own patients, classifying the portraits according to now antiquated "types of insanity," such as nymphomania, catalepsy, and suicidal melancholy. Working in the belief that mental states are manifested in the physiognomy and that photographs are objective representations of reality, Diamond described himself as a photographer who "catches in a moment the permanent cloud, or the passing storm or sunshine of the soul, and thus enables the metaphysician to witness and trace out the connexion between the visible and the invisible." What is made visible in the patient's gaze and with historical hindsight is, ironically, the folly of such beliefs.

Artist

Hugh Welch Diamond

Date

1850–55

Medium

Albumen silver print from glass negative

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Anonymous Gifts, by exchange, 2005