Nathalie Joffre

The video and sound installation He told me that his garden…by Nathalie Joffre is the result of the artist’s subjective exploration of the photographic archives of Bethlem Royal Hospital and more specifically of a collection of patients’ pictures, taken by portrait photographer Henry Hering between 1857 and 1859.

Whilst studying Bethlem’s archives, Nathalie became more and more interested not only in the photographic documents themselves, but also in the relationship she was building with them; with the place where they are located and the people on the pictures.

Nathalie’s intention has been to consider these archives not as a fixed accumulation of dead material but as a living and travelling body, that one can access and appropriate physically and mentally.