Flavia Schuster (Argentina):

Servicio de Admisión

“Since July 2010 I have been coordinating a photographic workshop at J.T. Borda, Buenos Aires’ 147-year old psychiatric hospital for men. The mad ones are deposited into the hospital's Admissions Ward and they are forgotten by their families and society, more often than not, until they die. Inside a shabby shed in the hospital gardens I set up a studio where I would invite the mad ones to come in, hidden from doctors, nurses and security guards, to be photographed. I asked the men to sit down and literally look at themselves in a see-through-mirror I glued to my camera lens. Mirrors used to be removed from psychiatric patients and, when confronted with their own image after years of medication and social isolation, their reactions varied from denial, awe, curiosity and rejection. Servicio de Admisión presents forgotten psychotic men looking at themselves.”

Flavia Schuster undertook a Bachelor of Communications with Honours, majoring in Photomedia at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia and is currently based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Her work is represented in private and public collections in Argentina, Australia Spain and the United States, including the State Art Collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

Images © Flavia Schuster.