Art History and Contemporary Technical and Medical Images
Art history needs to be better at engaging with the wealth of non-art images produced by a diverse range of image-making practices, or risks obsolescence as a discipline. This session builds on the work of scholars such as James Elkins, who have argued extensively for the value of art historians and scholars of visual culture engaging with categories of image that are not normally laid claim to by their field.
With a focus on contemporary technical and medical images (Bredekamp and others 2015), this session invites proposals for papers that foreground the importance of visual science literacy and explore how images are constructed and put to work in fields such as medicine, vision science, neurology, cognitive psychology and more. We are particularly interested in scholarship that integrates art history and image- science approaches with ASTS (Art, Science and Technology Studies), given the latter’s emphasis on processes and on the body-image-technology ensemble. Papers might assess the progresses of the field so far and reflect on the current direction of research.
The conceptual framing and practical aims of this session are grounded in a visual scientific literacy reading group (“Reading Technical and Medical Images”) run by the session convenors. Both reading group and AAH session consider how an interdisciplinary approach to technical and medical images might contribute to a more granular visual science literacy, with the aim of creating a practical toolbox that scholars in different disciplines, as well as lay readers, might use to better comprehend the images they produce and work with.
Session Convenors:
Silvia Casini, University of Aberdeen
Fiona Johnstone, Durham University
Speakers:
Jacob Badcock, University College London
Measuring Exposure, Exposure to Measuring: The Uses of Medical Photography at Agbogbloshie
Often referred to as “the world’s largest e-waste dump site”, Agbogbloshie, a scrap metals market and informal e-waste processing site in Accra, Ghana, has become a key point of interest for international environmental NGOs, environmental scientists, journalists, and photographers (Little, 2016). Owing to the work of photographers Pieter Hugo, Kevin McAlveney, and Nyaba Leon Ouedraogo, Agbogbloshie has become infamous for images of injured workers (known as “burner boys”) in toxified, smoke-filled landscapes. These highly stylised and dramatic images have been the subject of much art historical attention and have arguably contributed to the recent police and military demolition of Agbogbloshie and the surrounding area (Badcock, 2022; Iheka, 2021; Akese, 2019). However, much less attention has been paid to other uses of photography, such as the use of photography to produce medical and technical imagery (for example, the use of wearable cameras to measure the personal inhalation exposure of workers to toxic substances), and the use of “photovoice” strategies to empower workers to represent their injuries and health problems (Laskaris et al., 2019; Thompson, 2022). This paper sets out to close this gap, arguing that medical and technical imagery produced at Agbogbloshie complicates the perceived violence of the camera for representing suffering in environmental crisis zones.
On the one hand, these images attempt, in the manner of Ariella Azoulay’s Civil Contract of Photography, to tend to and alleviate the injuries of exposed workers (Azoulay, 2008). On the other hand, they could be said to reproduce the logic of colonial photography and medical (race) science by objectifying, measuring, and quantifying black African photographic subjects, ultimately failing to represent the neo-colonial causes of pollution and toxicity which expose workers to injury in the first place (Liboiron, 2021). I ultimately consider whether the use of photography for contemporary medical science can elide historical problems regarding the use of photography for documenting or representing black suffering, or whether they inadvertently perform the same aesthetic and epistemological functions as colonial photography and medical (race) science.
Dizhen Wu, SOAS, University of London
Portraying Perceptions: Visual Imagery of Medicine in Late Qing Pictorials, 1872-1912
This paper aims to illuminate the significant role played by Chinese pictorials in shaping medical perceptions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The introduction of Western medicine to China was accompanied by a complex process of psychological and behavioral adjustment, as Chinese society grappled with the impact of Western medical and cultural influences. While considerable studies have investigated the process and underlying factors influencing the reception of medical innovation in modern China, visual sources have only been superficially analysed. The medical images in late Qing pictorials offer depictions of disease, healing process, and the doctor-patients relationship, claiming an “on-site authenticity” that both shocked viewers and challenged their original cognition frameworks. Additionally, the advent of new printing technologies, such as lithography, facilitated the reproduction and widespread distribution of numerous images that were previously confined to private collections. This paper endeavours to provide alternative insights into the role of visual culture in shaping historical perspectives on medicine and healthcare. It specifically explores how medical practices were visually represented, articulating the perception of Western medicine within the context of trans-cultural knowledge transfer. Through the meticulous analysis of both textual and visual elements in the pictorials, this study scrutinizes their impact on viewers. Furthermore, the paper attempt to explore the intersection of gender discourse, ethical discourse, and cultural values in the visual representation of Western medicine in these pictorials, shedding light on the intricate ways in which medical practices are embedded within larger socio-cultural contexts.
David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
From Operational Images to the Technical Aesthetic: Tracking Object-Oriented Visual Culture
This paper considers the ever-increasing circulation of technical (in particular medical) images in contemporary culture and their limited reception in art history. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in ‘operational images’ (Parikka 2023, Farocki 2000), from 3D modelling imagery to technical medical visualisation. Such images increasingly form a ‘grey’ visual economy: in automatic number plate recognition, industrial imaging and facial recognition systems, machine-to-machine transactions take place without the need for a human observer. These can be understood as ‘invisible images’ (Paglen 2019). However, existing work has taken relatively little account of technical images which are intended for humans. I consider two examples: the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and bacteriophages. In both cases, the attempt to make technical images visible leads to an insistent visual rhetoric: the spiky blob CGI, for example, is inflected by aesthetic considerations, in contrast to electron microscope images of the virus, and bacteriophages, too, are often consumed in schematised forms which produce a highly loaded visual imaginary. Art history needs to do more to respond to the ‘object-oriented’ (Keenan & Weizman 2012) visual world in which we live; at the same time, we need to arrive at a nuanced understanding of the persistence of human viewing, and of the enduring role of aesthetic considerations within an increasingly machine-driven visual sphere.
Martin Kemp, Trinity College, Oxford
The Beautiful Killer: Imaging COVID in Science and Society
The sudden advent of the corona virus was accompanied by a deluge of images, ranging from technical representations in medical science to cartoons of Donald Trump. In fact, the virus does not literally “look” like anything since its representation is based on data that lies outside our visible spectrum. Every feature of the representations – illumination, form, colour, texture etc. – needs to be invented, generally in keeping with conventions in computer graphics.
A series of radical questions arise. What are the features of the virus that are translated into visible form? Who is making the images? How and why are they published? How do they operate in medical communication and popular communication in science? What happens when the images are picked up by mainstream media on a broader basis. Why have so many of the images become aestheticized, in marked contrast to their deadly role? How is that the more-or-less standard picture of the virus has become iconic? Why and how do cartoonists pick up the images? The visual story of the virus compresses a huge range of medical communication in an unusually intense manner.