asylum

2 way mirror, white plexi, ink jet backlight film, wood, image from Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond’s Inmates of Surrey County Asylum, 1852

This piece contains: an image of a woman backlight and framed in a wooden box. The image of this woman sits behind a 2 way mirror that both reveals and obscures the image. As the viewer moves towards the piece their reflection will become visible in the mirror and obscure the image. As the viewer moves away from the piece the image will become visible and obscure their reflection.

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On Dr Hugh Welch Diamond’s Inmates of Surrey County Asylum, 1852

I have been looking at this image for probably 10 years, and it happens every time I look. The blurry background and clothes, the light, soft texture of the print, all this throws her clear dark eyes into sharp contrast. These eyes fix my gaze immediately. Her eyes look out at me with permanent disarming openness. Not malice, or energetic madness, but a brave vulnerability and I crumple every time I see it. She adds a half smile to this stare, taking any confrontation out of the image (my last hope of an emotional buffer thru a detached distance).

I wonder how mad she was? How competent she was, how aware of this specific moment. I always assume that she never really new what would happen when this photo was taken. I imagine she understood who her doctor was and that he was doing something medical. That she saw the camera and understood it either as a camera, or more probable, as a medical instrument. I don’t think she imagined that this moment of pure open vulnerability would be permanently stretched out for all time, for all to see.

She looks directly through the lens and out at me, completely unaware that I would and can see her. She looks with none of the usual devices to keep me at a distance. There is no cultural wall to diffuse, no bitterness to slight me, no insecurities to mask, no fear to exploit, no humor for context, no pride to distract, nothing to keep me out. She simply looks with full openness, either blissfully unaware or brilliantly unaffected by the prospect of visibility.

She offers an unparalleled level of sustained openness that makes me uncomfortable. Uncomfortable, because it is familiar, desirable, and unattainable to me all at the same time. In this one image, with this one look, she was able to distill the experience of being looked at into an experience that continues as long as you look. So much so that she renders me the specimen, I become viewed by her unapologetic openness, hyper aware of myself. I feel my heartbeat in my chest, I feel air move into my lungs, and I know that I can never be so vulnerable for so long, with such power.

She then becomes a refuge for me. A place to rest my eyes that is clean and human. I feel in her debt as a viewer, as if she took the burden of begin truly visible in a photograph away for us, by actually being so. Making her image both the first and final authentic photograph of a person.