Dispassionate Attitudes
Photographic collage, 2022
Dispassionate Attitudes is an intervention into the photographic archive of the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where female patients diagnosed with hysteria were photographed under the direction of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot in the late nineteenth century. Produced in the hospital's own photographic studio and published in Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière (1877–1880), the images show women performing highly theatrical poses for the camera.
About the Work
Ready physically intervenes in these photographs, hand-cutting away the women's recognisable features and removing sexualised captions such as ‘ecstasy’ and ‘amorous supplication’. What remains are anonymous bodies and empty poses. The voids expose the restrictive roles imposed upon the women while drawing attention to the poses' striking resemblance to religious images of ecstasy and possession, revealing how medical representations of hysteria drew upon a much older visual and cultural language.
The act of removal also disrupts the authority of the original photographs. Rather than presenting the women as medical specimens to be observed and classified, Dispassionate Attitudes turns attention back onto the structures through which they were represented: the photographer, the institution and the medical gaze.
Medium
Collage with hand-cut photographic prints of archival medical images.
Selected Presentations
Jackal Independent Art Space, Berwick-upon-Tweed, 2026
Modern Art Oxford, Instagram feature
Fast Forward: Women in Photography, Instagram feature
