Gallery of Work Produced by Change Minds Participants

Expressions, faces and histories. Lives lived and hard fought, hidden and forgotten. Seeking out the faded snapshots and cursive case files from patients of the Victorian-era Norfolk County Lunatic Asylum.. Their piercing looks and distracted demeanours, wrinkles and frowns, sadness, desperation and pride. These are portraits that such ordinary townsfolk would never have been afforded in their lives. It is only through their regretful circumstances that posterity records them at all. 150 years later, rather than ‘patients’, ‘the unwell’ or ‘the mad’, they were just people like you or I.

Invulnerable

Here am I – safe in my present eyeing your past

No quid pro quo – just an interest to know

I wondered if I had the right – how do we earn such privilege?

Your photo triggered more than my imagination had anticipated

you were the youngest of men – captured at 18 years of age

Anecdotal evidence painted a vivid picture too

I learned it took 3 men to hold you down

and that you advised them of their folly

“You cannot injure me as I am dead”