photographs of bindweed juxtaposed with Portrait of a patient
shot 2020-21

A dangerous insinuation – a description of bindweed from The Language of Flowers, Robert Tyas, 1869

Portrait of a patient, H. W. Diamond, salt print c.1855
© Royal Photographic Society Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London

These artist pages published in Hapax Magazine, 2022, foreground bindweed, a native but unwelcome plant found throughout the British Isles. The landscapes explore the ubiquity of this resourceful but marginalised plant, which grows most commonly in neglected hedgerows or on open land that has been disturbed by human intervention, supporting itself on other plants or structures to reach light in the most unpromising of situations. Its resilient growth provides ground cover on barren land and a supportive ecosystem for insects and other organisms.

Dr Huw Welch Diamond was a British psychiatrist and founder member of the Royal Photographic Society, London. He is best known for his photographs of his female patients at the Surrey Asylum.

Exhibited in We Contain Multitudes, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2026 (wall vinyl, 9m x 4.47m); I need to be more than a lesson you learned, dis-place, Disability Arts Online, 2026-7.

Published in Hapax Magazine, 2022.