• 1 Adèle Yon, Mon vrai nom est Elisabeth, Paris, Editions du Sous-sol, 2025, p. 302.

In her book Mon vrai nom est Elisabeth, Adèle Yon investigates and documents the life of her great-grand-mother, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the 1950s. She soon wonders about the availability of photographic archives made and preserved either by the asylum or by the nursing staff. “I ask Roseline if she still has photographs from that time…’I had boxes full of them,’ she says, ‘but I threw it all away one month ago. I haven’t kept anything. You should have told me before… I had lots of pictures.’”1

• 2 Allan Sekula, "The Body and the Archive", October 39, 1986, p. 3-64. 
• 3 John Tagg, The Burden of Representation, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

The next issue of Photographica aims precisely at documenting these photographs—the ones that were kept, discarded, published, or even sold. How was photography produced, used and circulated in institutions cut off from the rest of the world, those enclosed spaces where people live reclusive and strictly regulated lives (psychiatric wards, boarding schools, convents, monasteries, military barracks, prison camps, sanatoriums, leper colonies, shelters, retirement homes,…)? While photographs have often been studied through the lens of their controlling or disciplinary function (Sekula,2 Tagg3), they have more rarely been addressed as circulating objects or as means of negotiation and contestation. In this issue, we seek to explore the diversity of the functions of photography in institutional contexts—whether initiated by the institution itself or by the people living or working within it—in order to understand the complex social relations and representations that have existed in closed institutions from the beginnings of photography to the 1980s.

• 4 According to Goffman, a total institution is “a place of residence and work where a large number of (...)
• 5 Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir, Paris, Gallimard, 1975.
• 6 Rostaing Corinne, "Institution totale : ambiguïtés et potentialités d'un concept bien vivant", Ethn (...)

Our theoretical ground is rooted in Erwin Goffman’s concept of total institutions4 and the debates that followed in the 1960s, particularly in the work of Michel Foucault5 and, more recently, Corinne Rostaing.6 In this issue, we would like to question the ways in which photographs corroborate these definitions or, on the contrary, reveal their instability and test their validity by exposing their limits. In “closed” spaces, can photography—as a practice—and photographs—as objects—circulate beyond the walls? If so, are such circulations controlled and managed by the institutions, or do they reflect strategies and motivations that attest to the porosity of these spaces—porosity that the institutions have an interest in maintaining? We want to examine how some photographs participate in the excluding and disciplinary functions intrinsic to total institutions, as well as how others seem able to exist at their margins.

• 7 An example is the « efficiency » of the amalgamation process as staged in the « before/after » pict (...)

Photographs taken in institutions are not always produced by the institution, nor for its own use. Some are destined to circulate beyond its walls, either to promote and defend its public image or, on the contrary, to conceal certain aspects of life inside. We would like to question the nature of these “documents” and the diversity of media used to distribute them on the outside: photo albums, postcards, illustrations, posters,… Which images circulate and to which purpose, for instance promotional ones? 7It would also be interesting to consider the perspective of the residents and examine the role these images play in representing their life experiences to viewers beyond the walls.

• 8 Renneville, Marc, « Démons et déments. Quand Détective enquête sur la folie », Criminocorpus [Onlin (...)

In the magazine Détective, for instance, some of the most sensational articles on institutions (prisons and psychiatric wards) were illustrated with pictures unrelated with the actual content.8 Even if off-topic, photography was used to provide readers with the desired sense of awe through striking layout, typography and crude photomontage. This example raises the question of what is used to fill in the void when photography is forbidden. The multiplicity of media through which images circulate prompts questions about the accompanying discourses: denouncing living conditions, supporting of the established system, illustrating a news story, portraying an institutional actor,… Depending on their visual choices and their circulation channels, photographs may come in support of institutional discourses or, conversely, open a breach in the walls.

• 9 Adèle Yon, Mon vrai nom est Elisabeth, Paris, Editions du Sous-sol, 2025, p. 302.

In her book, Adèle Yon asks Roseline, a retired psychiatric nurse, about the pictures she eventually threw away: “There were pictures of celebrations organised by the nun, pictures of carnivals… I had tons of stuff.”9 This suggests that the existence of a type of internal photography that escapes the control of the institution and administration. It is produced by amateur photographers, be they members of staff or residents. Are these photographs the result of individual practices, or are they produced under supervision or in more organised forms, such as photo clubs? Do institutions establish rules for the practice of photography? On a technical level, how do people have access to a camera or a photo lab?

• 10 Pierre Bourdieu, Un art moyen, Paris, Les éditions de Minuit, 1965.
• 11 Irina Tcherneva, “For an Exploration of Visual Resources of the History of Imprisonment”, The Journ (...)

In some cases, amateur photography may adopt the rhythm and visual codes of the institutions. Not only does it document daily life, it may also participate in it with the presence of a photographer during social rituals (birthdays, celebrations, individual or family portraits,…).10 One may ask whether photography helps reproduce social norms present in other environments and import them into closed institutions while obscuring their disciplinary dimension. Are all internal photographs disciplinary in nature? One may also consider tacit censorship, as in Soviet internment camps in the mid-20^th century, where amateur photographers avoided taking photographs of material signs of imprisonment situation such as barbed-wire.11