browseLetters from Ernestine K.
Stefan Dolfen (Photographer)
From the press release for Side Gallery Exhibition, 1994:
In this first major UK exhibition of his work, Letters from Ernestine K takes the form of a dialogue between the photographs of Stefan Dolfen and the residents of Bethel, a long-stay psychiatric institution in Germany. Ernestine K is the name used to represent the women of Bethel, and her letters were authored by Bethel director Adelheid Rieffel, during the period that Stefan worked there.
The letters were developed as both a response to the photographer, and his desire to produce a series of portraits of the Bethel residents in a manner which involved the people themselves, and as a means of giving some kind of voice to people who in many cases are not in a position to use more direct means. Stefan Dolfen lived and worked with the people of Bethel over a long period of time, during which he was able to develop strong personal relationships with some of them. The letters reflect this in their content and style, producing a remarkable dialogue with the images in the show.
Stefan Dolfen has sought to examine a recurrent theme in many concerned photographers’ works, the power relationship between photographer and photographed. He asks the viewer to confront images of the mentally ill as we commonly find them in their everyday lives, and counter-points our reactions with a response from the fictional resident...
Note: Stefan Dolfen was a participant in the Unclear Family photographic workshops in Crook (County Durham), Amiens (Northern France), Luby (Czechoslovakia) and Borbek, Essen (Germany). He brought this exhibition to Side Gallery in December 1994.