Human behaviour that deviates from the norm has always incurred curiosity. It is thus unsurprising to discover that photography was used to capture images of the mentally ill as early as 1848.
The photography of mental illness can be defined as the practice of depicting people whose behaviour has been deemed markedly abnormal by their contemporaries. Photographs taken of the mentally ill once served to document case histories, but occasionally also as therapeutic instruments. The patient seemingly only needed to recognize himself in the image of insanity and to note his difference from the images of normalcy in order to restore himself to reason and sanity.
Some 100 photographic glass negatives, recently donated to the author, are images of individuals, or small groups of people, many of whom are clearly mentally ill and held in some sort of captivity. These images, in all probability were taken in South African mental asylums and some prisons.
A prominent photo from the collection
These images date from between 1908 and 1912. Both the location and the photographer details are unknown, yet these unusual images leave the viewer saddened, surprised, shocked or even in denial as in some cases they portray images of clearly abnormal behaviour – a dimension of human pain and imbalance that the majority of normal functioning human beings are not exposed to on a daily basis...
