Today the use of photography (and its extension, video) in psychiatry is a common practice. But in the 1850s, when pioneering medical photographer and psychiatrist Dr. Hugh W. Diamond was behind the camera, this technique was an innovative application of art to science, reflecting and expanding the contemporary interest in physiognomic characteristics. In "The Face of Madness," notable scholar Sander Gilman has curated a unique exhibition of 54 of Dr. Diamond's photographs and commentary.

Diamond's photographs are eloquent portraits of the insane-the melancholy, the depressed, the...