Picturing the unusual: Uncertainty in the historiography of medical photography

Abstract

The article 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. Secondly, the article 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 1986 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.