Mathieu Pernot and Philippe Artières
13 Feb - 11 May 2014
MATHIEU PERNOT AND PHILIPPE ARTIÈRES
L’asile des photographies
13 February - 11 May 2014
In 2010, Le Point du Jour and the Fondation Bon-Sauveur invited us to work on the archives of the Picauville psychiatric hospital, some forty kilometres from Cherbourg. This invitation came in the wake of an earlier request : the old hospital buildings were due for demolition, and the Foundation had asked Le Point du Jour to help find another way to keep the memory of the hospital alive. It’s unusual for a medical institution to approach a local cultural institution in this way. We didn’t know exactly what to expect, but we were told that the audiovisual department had a collection of old photos and films, patiently compiled by Léon Faligot, a nurse at the Foundation. We would also be given access to the hospital’s written archives which included medical files, some of which dated from before the Second World War. When we discovered these hundreds of photographs from the 1930s to the present day, stored away in cardboard boxes and files, we knew straightaway that we had stumbled upon buried treasure."
Mathieu Pernot and Philippe Artières.
L’asile des photographies
13 February - 11 May 2014
In 2010, Le Point du Jour and the Fondation Bon-Sauveur invited us to work on the archives of the Picauville psychiatric hospital, some forty kilometres from Cherbourg. This invitation came in the wake of an earlier request : the old hospital buildings were due for demolition, and the Foundation had asked Le Point du Jour to help find another way to keep the memory of the hospital alive. It’s unusual for a medical institution to approach a local cultural institution in this way. We didn’t know exactly what to expect, but we were told that the audiovisual department had a collection of old photos and films, patiently compiled by Léon Faligot, a nurse at the Foundation. We would also be given access to the hospital’s written archives which included medical files, some of which dated from before the Second World War. When we discovered these hundreds of photographs from the 1930s to the present day, stored away in cardboard boxes and files, we knew straightaway that we had stumbled upon buried treasure."
Mathieu Pernot and Philippe Artières.