INSTITUTION. Head on Photo Festival. AU. 2017.

Institution is a photographic series that documents the buildings associated with an old mental hospital.

The buildings were built circa 1838 and comprise examples of Colonial and Victorian architecture set within extensive landscaped grounds.

The photographs adopt a classical architectural photography approach to composition – depicting entire buildings within context through to elevational and sectional photographs of the buildings and intimate architectural details.

However unlike contemporary commercial architectural photographs where people and movement are often prevalent and desirable these photographs are without people or movement. This is intentional to emphasise the fact that the buildings are no longer used and the inmates that once occupied the buildings and their stories have long gone. Beautiful but haunting buildings remain.

The use of black and white photographs underlines the age and austere nature of the buildings and accentuates the textural stone and brick materiality of the buildings. Black and white transports one back to a different era.

An infrared filter has also been used to help create an almost surreal [or unreal] atmosphere in the photographs.

In addition to an appreciation of the buildings that remain the intention is to create a mood and atmosphere in the photographs where one can almost imagine the inmates inside the buildings and contemplate life in a mental institution in a time when attitudes and treatment approaches to mental health were different.