Using the photography of Richard Avedon, Francesca Woodman, and Tara Wray, this essay explores how clothing and photography are used to construct, understand, and treat the mentally ill subject — a feminized positionality that is both visible and invisible. Here we can witness how these technologies were used to “fix” the mentally ill subject, in many meanings of the word — giving stable form to complex interior phenomena and producing specimens for others to study.
