Malformed ― Forgotten Brains of the Texas State Mental Hospital

Hidden away out of sight in a forgotten storage closet deep within the bowels of the University of Texas State Mental Hospital languished a forgotten, but unique and exceptional, collection of 100 extremely rare, malformed, or damaged human brains preserved in jars of formaldehyde.
Decades later, in 2013, photographer Adam Voorhes discovered the brains and became obsessed with documenting them in close-up, high-resolution, large format photographs, revealing their oddities, textures, and otherworldly essence. Voorhes donned a respirator and chemical gloves, and began the painstaking process of photographing the collection. Desperate to know more about the provenance of the brains, Voorhes, together with journalist Alex Hannaford, traveled down the rabbit hole of the collection's history.
Sifting through a century's worth of university documents, the truth-seekers discovered that rival universities had bitterly fought over the collection. But after winning the "Battle for the Brains" (against Harvard University among others) the University of Texas at Austin secured the collection. Now, however, the collection has been reduced to half its original size and is in a state of neglect. Voorhes and Hannaford's hunt for the medical records became a hunt for the missing brains, but with no scientific or medical documents to pair with the body of photographs, Alex began following the trail to the researchers who had worked with them and the caretakers in whose trust they were placed. The result of the duo's efforts has been a revived interest in the collection with various science journals publishing writings and research about the brains. And the university is now creating MRI scans of the specimens and intends to showcase them at its new medical school. Alas, for now, the hunt for the missing brains seems to be far from over.

Fascinated by art and science, Adam Voorhes works in his Austin, Texas, photographic studio creating images that are sometimes childlike and often eerie. Collaborating with his wife and creative partner Robin, he is frequently commissioned by magazines such as Details, GQ, Esquire, O, Wired, and ESPN among others. The team is known for solving difficult creative problems through intense brainstorming and executing challenging and abstract images with ease. They are both ferocious lovers of bulldogs.

Born in London in 1974, Alex Hannaford has worked as a journalist and editor since he graduated in 1997. He was as a feature writer and commissioning editor on the London Evening Standard before going freelance in 2003; has taught journalism at Kingston University in the U.K. and authored a biography (Last of the Rock Romantics) for Ebury Press, part of the Random House group. He has written for the Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times magazines, The Guardian, GQ, Esquire, The Atlantic, and the Texas Observer. He has reported from West Africa, Hong Kong, Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. and currently calls Texas home. In 2012 he was awarded a Dart fellowship at Columbia University's school of journalism.