Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Audrey Amiss’s scrapbooks were degrading over time, so it was vital to photograph each item as thoroughly and quickly as possible to create a digital record. The unique properties of a large number of incredible works presented photographer Thomas Farnetti with unprecedented new challenges. In this film, he demonstrates the techniques he developed to photograph and capture for posterity every detail of Audrey’s highly intricate scrapbooks.
This short film is part of Finding Audrey Amiss
Living in and out of psychiatric hospitals, the artist Audrey Amiss documented her everyday life in a striking visual diary. When she died, her family donated her archive of hundreds of scrapbooks, sketchbooks and notebooks to Wellcome Collection. In this series, archivist Elena Carter writes about cataloguing and caring for the collection to understand the artist’s life, which is also the subject of the feature film ‘Typist Artist Pirate King’, directed by Wellcome Screenwriting Fellow Carol Morley.
wellcomecollection.org/series/Y_OGkRQAACgAq4ui
Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/wellcomecollection
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/explorewellcome
See us on Instagram: instagram.com/wellcomecollection
Audrey Amiss’s scrapbooks were degrading over time, so it was vital to photograph each item as thoroughly and quickly as possible to create a digital record. The unique properties of a large number of incredible works presented photographer Thomas Farnetti with unprecedented new challenges. In this film, he demonstrates the techniques he developed to photograph and capture for posterity every detail of Audrey’s highly intricate scrapbooks.
This short film is part of Finding Audrey Amiss
Living in and out of psychiatric hospitals, the artist Audrey Amiss documented her everyday life in a striking visual diary. When she died, her family donated her archive of hundreds of scrapbooks, sketchbooks and notebooks to Wellcome Collection. In this series, archivist Elena Carter writes about cataloguing and caring for the collection to understand the artist’s life, which is also the subject of the feature film ‘Typist Artist Pirate King’, directed by Wellcome Screenwriting Fellow Carol Morley.
wellcomecollection.org/series/Y_OGkRQAACgAq4ui
Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/wellcomecollection
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/explorewellcome
See us on Instagram: instagram.com/wellcomecollection
