Selections from Part 1 of “Variants” by Jodie Goodnough

I admit to having a bit of a head start on this show, since I’ve been checking in with Jodie Goodnough as she worked on it over the past months, but when I walked into The Fourth Wall gallery, the final product still managed to take me by surprise.  In Variants, Goodnough addresses the issue of how psychiatric patients have been represented over time. The show is composed of two interconnected parts. Part 1 features large format photos that draw on the iconography of early mental hospital documentation. Each portrait is printed at about the size of the 4×5 negative and paper-clipped to a clipboard. Through updating the outdated psuedo-science of physiognomy, Goodnough questions the established treatment practices of Western medicine.

Still from Part 2 of “Variants” by Jodie Goodnough

Goodnough continues probing the pharmaceutical industry in the second part of the series, which is presented as a looping slideshow on a display monitor. Here she photographed the same set of subjects, but this time in the style of the pharmaceutical ads that constantly appear in magazines and TV. The two parts of Variants don’t compete, but rather expand the conversation: Goodnoughs subjects are simultaneously named as psychiatric patients and freed from the restriction of diagnosis as identity.

Variants feels like both a finished product and a body of work bursting with potential. Perhaps it’s because I’ve already watched the project develop and change for so long, but I can imagine countless ways the project could continue grow with added subjects and new ways it could be exhibited to showcase different aspects of the body of work. I can only hope more galleries will want to show Goodnough’s work so that I can see where it goes from here.

(As a side note, Jodie’s artist statement is pretty kick-ass)

Discover more of Jodie Goodnough’s work here.