As long as I remember, I have had an interest in the psychological aspects of things. Studying psychology and philosophy at A-Level enhanced this attraction.

I have always had a keen curiosity about the way the mind works and found myself even more intrigued by stories, where the mind differed from ‘normal’. Linking this interest with photography led me to want to visit abandoned asylums, I felt I could create a kind of artist ‘case study’ from such images and after research I found one, which had been closed for sixteen years.

The building itself did not contain much that gave away its previous function however there was something eerie about the fact it was such a normal looking place. Whilst I walked through the long corridors and small rooms I gained a sense of human presence and found myself creating stories about what could have happened.

I proceeded to visit other abandoned buildings and I found that the atmosphere of other places was quite strange too and that it seemed not to matter what the building originally had been. I had the same feeling whether it was an asylum or an RAF base: they all gave off the same despondent emotion.

I wanted to extend the work beyond the ‘aesthetic of decay’, which is so beloved by photography and photographers, and make an analogous relationship between a chaotic and dysfunctional place and mental dysfunction. To expand on the meaning behind the images I needed to add something, which would bring this out.

During my development from one series to the next, I started reading mental health journals to gain a greater knowledge of the subject in hand. I came across a real life case study, which when reading, I felt related to one particular image of mine. Adding case studies to the images offered the dispassionate and objective language of science to juxtapose with the isolated aesthetics of the empty spaces. The cases work as evidence: information for the viewer to read and create an understanding.

I sourced case studies for each image within the series and these were found in published texts such as Freud’s ‘Cases of Hysteria’. The series contains twenty images, which are displayed within the book along with the text.