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Photography In The 1840s: Dr. Hugh Welch Diamond

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In the 1840s, Dr Hugh Welch Diamond was a doctor whom used photography involving the mentally ill for his studies. He studied psychiatry at Bethlem Hospital in London. He combined his medical training with photographic practice and began to photograph the patients at the Surrey County Asylum. He photographed the patients in portrait format with a plain background. The patients were dressed in their clothes that they had to wear in the asylum, thus stripping them of their identity and they appeared uncared for. They posed with a plain expression, some gazed away and some patients looked straight at the camera with piercing eyes or even a smile. These portraits were for his study on ‘Physiognomy’. Physiognomy is simply judging someone’s personality
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