Photographs from the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum, South Africa, 1890–1907

This essay investigates photographs taken at the Grahamstown Lunatic Asylum during the superintendence of Dr Thomas Duncan Greenlees, from 1890 to 1907. It examines two specific sets of photographs: first, the photographs taken for public consumption, and, second, the casebook photographs of the patients. I argue that the photographs produced for public consumption ascribe to the broader public image of the asylum. Greenlees constructed a public image of the asylum being committed to the curative regime of moral therapy while catering to the tastes, proclivities and activities of white private patients. The photographs for public consumption also include images of black patients. Yet, in this time of British colonial rule in South Africa, there was differential treatment for black patients. Under Greenlees’s superintendence, they were assigned supervised physical labour tasks under the pretext of them being occupational treatment. The discourses of cure and recovery in such a “treatment” regimen become signalled by the black patient’s ability to work. Thus, the curative ideal of the asylum for black patients, disseminated as its public image, is primarily concerned with domesticating black bodies into a docile and cooperative labour force. However, the public image of black patients as being passive before the asylum’s regimen is problematised through an analysis of the second set of images – the casebook photographs. These photographs depict patients confronting, refusing and resisting the asylum administration. Thus, the casebook photographs are valuable in recuperating active resistance and hold the potential to undermine the public image of the asylum.