A passion for drapery? Situating Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault’s photographs from Morocco (1919)

This thesis explores the corpus of photographs produced by French psychiatrist Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault in Morocco in 1919. Best known in Western academia for his "De Clérambault Syndrome," also known as "Erotomania," and for being the only recognized ‘master’ of Jacques Lacan, Clérambault's character has fascinated scholars as much for his psychiatric Oeuvre and his methods at the Paris police's Special Infirmary, as for his non-medical activities, including the courses he delivered on drapery at the Ecole National Supérieur des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Due to his connection to Lacan and his psychiatric research, especially Passion érotique chez la femme (1908), Clérambault and his images have primarily been studied within the context of psychoanalysis and fetishism, and exhibited with little critical commentary. In contrast to this existing body of work, my thesis aims to rectify the misinterpreted facets of Clérambault's life, which are tightly linked to the interpretation of his corpus of photographs. By providing, an accurate account of Clérambault's life, era, and influences, this thesis will re-situate the images within their histories, and initial purposes and, in turn reveal how they should be understood. Structured in three clear sections – the Orientalist discourse, drapery, and art history, and 20th century psychiatry – this thesis offers a new perceptive and thorough analysis of Clérambault's Morocco photographs and places this corpus within the wider canon of the history of art and of photography.