Max Reeves

“My first exhibition at Bethlem Gallery contained a work called ‘Threatening Skies’ consisting of 100 photographs of Crows taken around London. The title derived from one of Van Gogh’s last paintings ‘Wheat Field Under Threatening Skies’ of 1890, via an essay by Antonin Artaud. The work was an expression of my life-long struggle with Depression. Gradually the symbol of the Crow mutated for me and found itself into my wider project of photographing London. It became an important leitmotif symbolising the outcast and the marginalised. The autonomous imagination. It also lent a sort of mythical edge to my study as a liminal creature that is always there but somehow not.”

“In September 2013 I was asked to be the photographer of the Mansions in the Orchard project at the Royal Bethlem Hospital. Whilst documenting the dramatic Historical move of Raving and Melancholy Madness into their new permanent home I became drawn towards the Forest which surrounded the sites of the specialised Hospital units which Patients wander negotiating their relationship between illness and wellness. I became enticed by the forest both for symbolic place in our folklore, as well as its resonance as an allegory for mental illness and inparticular the Chronic Depression I have. I explored it from within looking out.”

Max’s book, Mirkwood, is available to buy here