Basins

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 0.6s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Two porcelain hand basins sit side by side, their surfaces pocked and stained. Corroded cross-top taps. White tiles line the walls. A panel of pressure gauges is mounted above, dials still in place.

Edition

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In situ

Print datasheet

Title: Basins
Series: Callan Park
Catalogue: CPA-004
Process: Giclée
Captured: 29 October 2015
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified →
Recognised by: National Trust of Australia (NSW), 2016 Heritage Award, Multimedia

Where this was photographed

Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

About this print

A row of communal handwashing basins runs along one wall of a ward bathroom at Callan Park. The basins are white porcelain, set on a single slab counter at standard height, with brass taps and a single mirror mounted on the wall above each pair. The grouting between the wall tiles has darkened to grey-brown. A few of the basins are chipped at the rim. The cold-water taps still turn; the hot-water taps have been disconnected. The floor below is the same composite tile as the corridor outside. The room smells faintly of the soap that was last used in it.

Communal handwashing was part of the daily routine in Kirkbride wards, supervised by nursing staff at fixed times. Patients used the same basins for the same activities every day for the duration of their stay. The arrangement was efficient for the institution and standardised for the patient experience. Bathrooms like this one served dozens of patients at a time. After Callan Park closed in 2008 the bathrooms were locked but not gutted. The basins, the taps, and the mirrors are still mounted to the same walls. The water is off. A single nursing-station call button sits on the wall by the door, also disconnected.

From the field notes

Two porcelain basins sit against a wall of square cream tiles. The glaze is speckled with grime. Heavy cast iron taps, separate hot and cold, jut from the splashback. Behind the basins, a pale green metal panel is set into the tiled wall. Above it, a recessed cabinet holds five pressure gauges and valve controls, their faces clouded with dust. Flat grey light falls through a window to the left.

— Brett Patman

The series

Callan Park

2016–2018 · 66 photographs

Callan Park opened in 1885 as the Callan Park Hospital for the Insane, on land at Rozelle in Sydney's Inner West. The Kirkbride Complex was designed by colonial architect James Barnet and superintendent Frederick Norton Manning, intended as a working example of the more progressive psychiatric care principles of the period. The hospital was reorganised through the twentieth century and many of the wards remain. Brett photographed across multiple visits between 2016 and 2018.

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