I Swallowed My Dream

In this work, I examine the photographic representation of women in psychiatric institutions and the power relations between physician-photographer and photographed female patients. The project draws on 19th-century photographic archives, particularly from the Salpêtrière Hospital, which contains an extensive photographic archive of women diagnosed with hysteria. Derived from the Greek hystera (uterus), hysteria was long believed to be a disorder caused by a wandering uterus. Physicians, captivated by the supposed objectivity of photography, often provoked symptoms and seizures during photographic sessions. What was intended as clinical documentation became a choreographed, theatrical spectacle of contorted bodies, with countless repetitions and stagings. By re-enacting archival photographs, I position myself as both subject and operator of the camera, using a visible cable release to disrupt conventional hierarchies between photographer and photographed. Beneath the photographs, I inscribe excerpts from physicians’ case descriptions of photographed women. The accompanying artist’s booklet reframes archival fragments to construct a speculative archive of hysteria, situated between fact and fiction, document and performance, reality and dream. This project examines the enduring impact of institutional practices on contemporary understandings of mental health and the female body, seeking ways to reclaim histories embedded in collective female experience.