Upon admission to the psychiatric hospitals within the Epsom cluster, a photographic portrait was taken of each patient. Some of the original glass plate negatives still survive today. As part of an artist residency at King’s College London, in collaboration with Professor Alana Harris, interdisciplinary artist Dr Eric Fong reproduced scans of these glass plate negatives using the cyanotype printing method, an early photographic printing process known for producing Prussian blue monochromatic prints.

Dr Fong concentrated specifically on patients who were given pauper burials in the now-neglected Horton Cemetery. Grave markers (and a few headstones erected by families wealthy enough to afford them) were removed by the present owner and the site remains overgrown, abandoned, and derelict. Inspired by the thought that these people’s decomposed bodies have become part of the soil below and the vegetal growth above, the cyanotype prints were toned (dyed) with extracts of ivy leaves foraged from the Cemetery site.

By transforming the scale and materiality of the original wet-plate collodion portraits, from 3x2 inch albumen prints intended for medical casebooks to 30x22 inch toned cyanotypes, the works recontextualise the images and subvert the medical gaze. They invite the viewer to engage with the sitters deeply, personally, and to consider them as people with unique lived experiences, rather than anonymous, voiceless, marginalised patients in mental asylums. These repurposed images therefore seek to memorialise and reclaim the humanity and dignity of these abandoned and long-forgotten Epsom residents.

Dr Fong has gone on to reproduce the needlework, lace collars and dresses, created by the patients at the asylums, also printing them using the cyanotype method. He has also produced an award-winning experimental short film about the cemetery entitled ‘Apparitions’.

About Eric Fong

Eric Fong is an interdisciplinary artist and former medical doctor. His practice is driven by a keen interest in the juncture between art, science, and medicine. 

Fong has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York; Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; Gallery; EAST International, Norwich; and Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London. One of his works is in the Arts Council England Collection.

https://ericfong.com

@ericfongart