Confinement and Transgression: Madwoman in Mary Ellen Mark's “Ward 81”

• Main Authors: Chen-Yi Chien, 簡正怡
• Other Authors: J.C Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2005
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/33831701324946559896

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 藝術研究所 === 93 === Abstract 　　This paper mainly explores the images of the mentally ill in the work of American photographer Mary Ellen Mark. Mark has been a major documentary photographer in the US since the 60s. She is famed for photographing people living on the fringes of society and addressing issues about poverty or taboos through these social outcasts. This paper focuses on Ward 81, the work that established her reputation in 1976, and discusses the representation of the mentally ill based on the photographs as well as relevant literature. In order to analysis the facets of madness shown in Mark’s pictures and deal with their yet to be explored images of conflicted madwomen, the writer tries to interpret the representation of two different types of madwoman in Ward 81 by applying the concept of “boundary” and drawing on French scholar Foucault’s discourse on the history of insanity, feminism scholar Elaine Showalter’s ideas about madness and gender, as well as the views about the photographic representation of outsiders in contemporary art criticism. One type is the humble and disadvantaged madwoman confined in a medical institution. The other type is the neglected, menacing madwoman. In Ward 81, the images of these two types of madwoman are like the two sides of the same coin and show the potential of mad and irrational forces to break out despite seemingly effective measures to imprison them. They highlight how madness can escape from the surveillance of social institutions, the viewer’s mind and the image mechanism, suggesting the questioning of confinement and the tendency of breaking out. With this paper, the writer seeks to explore the imprints left by the three power structures - “society (medicine)”, “gender” and “photography” - on the images of madness, as well as offer more possibilities of interpretation to the study of photographic representation of the mentally ill in the west.