Abstract
The paper explores and expands the historiography of medical photography. First, it revisits historical scholarship on medical photography to demonstrate the absence of a consensus as to what counts as medical photography and what does not. Second, the paper illustrates the shortcomings of current analytical perspectives with two examples. The first picture was taken by the board of health in Honolulu in 1900 to visualise bubonic plague but resists recognition as a medical representation. The second, a 1987 picture of a person with AIDS, has been perceived as a medicalised photograph contrary to the artist’s intention. Both pictures, rather than delivering diagnostic inferences sustained notions of uncertainty and unusualness. With these examples, I outline the often overlooked significance of picturing uncertainty in the historiography of medical photography. Finally, I ask if these visualisations might be better addressed as elements of experimental systems rather than as representations of disease.
Original language | English |
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Article number | hkz108 |
Pages (from-to) | 375 - 398 |
Number of pages | 24 |
Journal | Social History of Medicine |
Volume | 34 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 18 Nov 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - May 2021 |
Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)
- medical photography
- AIDS
- plague
- experimental system
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Lukas Engelmann
- School of Social and Political Science - Chancellors Fellow - Senior Lecturer
- Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society
Person: Academic: Research Active