'Heeh Mäneka: Ab=phottographieren.' Adolf Wölfli inszeniert die Fotografie. (A.W. stages photography)

A detailed discussion of 'clinical photographic material' in
relation to the submerged irrational, non-social kernel of
photographic experience. The article owes much to Robert
Castel's ""Images and Images-of-Phantasy'' in Pierre Bourdieu's
""An illegitimate Art. On social use of photography'' (1971), in
which Castels gives a phenomenology of photographic experience,
using psychopathological examples. The auhor traces and analyses
the function photography has had for some psychiatric patients.
A thorough description is given of the case of Adolf Wölfli (who
was sentenced in 1895 to a Bern psychiatric hospital where he
lived until his death in 1930). Wölfli incorporated photography
in a sort of 'Gesamtkunstwerk', which the author sees as
reflecting modern techniques of information storage and
reproduction.


Citaten:
Castel, R.: Images and Images-of-Phantasy (in: Bourdieu, 1971)
Bourdieu, P.: An illegitimate Art (1971)