Mental Institution #4, East Louisiana State Mental Hospital, Jackson Louisiana, February 15, 1963
Gelatin silver print
50.8 × 40.6 cm (20 × 16 in.) (sheet)
The intimate, painful, often empathetic photographs in the series Mental Institution, East Louisiana State Mental Hospital, Jackson Louisiana show the harsh reality of life in a psychiatric hospital in 1960s America.
Best known for his fashion photography, Richard Avedon also tackled subjects with a strong documentary dimension, as this series shows. He spent a full day with the "patients" of the Jackson Psychiatric Centre to document their distress and grim living conditions. Despite the subject’s singularity and sensitivity, Avedon kept his sense of framing and ability to show, and bring to light, each model’s humanity.
The works in the series Mental Institution, East Louisiana State Mental Hospital, Jackson, Louisiana that are in the Pinault Collection will be shown for the first time during the exhibition “Au-delà de la couleur” ("Beyond Colour") at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes in June 2021.
