'Time Itself'
Sarah Bodman
A book made as the result of a residency at the Jenner Museum, Berkeley, Gloucester, in July 2002. The museum is the former home of
Edward Jenner who discovered the vaccination for Smallpox. Time Itself was made after a week spent at the museum.

Based on events from 1884, when the metropolitan asylums board removed the London smallpox hospital to three ship hulks; the Atlas,
Endymion and Castilia, moored on the Thames near Dartford. The ships were kept 100 metres from land. Architecturally the three ships
look quite appealing, like a mansion or castle chained together on the water. But these outer shells were just a façade to allay the fears of
onlookers and were in fact hollow constructions containing tiny hospital isolation cells and a huge incinerator on the middle ship. These
cells were more like prison quarters, with a regular burning smell of sulphur to diffuse the air. The only chance of reaching land again if
the patient recovered was for their family to arrange for a boat to cross the Thames and bring them back to land. Generally people did not
survive long enough to warrant the boat trip.

Edition of 10, 28 pp, 16 x 15 x 3 cms
Archival inkjet print on Velin Arches Blanc. Hard covers, bound in dark red buckram
with silver tooled title and ribbon ties by Bristol Bound Bookbinding. 2002, Bristol, UK

back