MARY MATTINGLY

The title, The Anatomy of Melancholy, is taken from a textbook by Robert Burton (1577-1640) titled, "The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Historically, Opened and Cut up." The textbook was first published in 1621 and went through roughly five compulsive editions, to make the final edition one of totality. Refering to the body, Burton addresses topics of physiology, love, religion, and medicine.

Robert Burton's textbook combines utopian philosophies and the condition of melancholy in a way that reflects my approach toward this photographic project: substituting the body for architecture, I document specific places years or decades after an initial utopic or imperialist vision to understand the effects of these social, psychological, and physical environments through clues to place found in a photographic record.