I First Saw the Light

Joseph Merrick’s conspicuous passage across London’s Whitechapel Road connected a freak show in which he was exhibited as “The Elephant Man” with the auspicious home of the Royal London Hospital. Seemingly worlds apart, Merrick’s body and surviving output link concomitant establishments in a reminder of the interplay between popular spectacle and bio-political, medical gaze. Merrick’s autobiographical text and a hollow card model he produced whilst in residence at the hospital are the focus for I First Saw the Light. –Locarno Film Festival