Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (2022)
Lynteris, Christos (Author)
MIT Press
Physical Details: 322
Language: English
In Visual Plague, Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894–1959), a global pandemic of bubonic plague that led to over twelve million deaths. Unlike medical photography, epidemic photography was not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with exposing the patient's body or medical examinations and operations. Instead, it played a key role in reconceptualizing infectious diseases by visualizing the “pandemic” as a new concept and structure of experience—one that frames and responds to the smallest local outbreak of an infectious disease as an event of global importance and consequence. As the third plague pandemic struck more and more countries, the international circulation of plague photographs in the press generated an unprecedented spectacle of imminent global threat. Nothing contributed to this sense of global interconnectedness, anticipation, and fear more than photography. Exploring the impact of epidemic photography at the time of its emergence, Lynteris highlights its entanglement with colonial politics, epistemologies, and aesthetics, as well as with major shifts in epidemiological thinking and public health practice. He explores the characteristics, uses, and impact of epidemic photography and how it differs from the general corpus of medical photography. The new photography was used not simply to visualize or illustrate a pandemic, but to articulate, respond to, and unsettle key questions of epidemiology and epidemic control, as well as to foster the notion of the “pandemic,” which continues to affect our lives today.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
M. Kemal Temel;
(2020)
The 1918 “Spanish Flu” Pandemic in the Ottoman Capital, Istanbul
(/isis/citation/CBB539750154/)
Book
Lukas Engelmann;
(2018)
Mapping AIDS: Visual Histories of an Enduring Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB145222575/)
Article
García Ferrandis, Xavier;
(2013)
Epidemiological and Care Aspects of Tuberculosis in Valencia during the Spanish Civil War and the Immediate Postwar Period (1936-1941)
(/isis/citation/CBB001200191/)
Article
Janakan, Gnananandan;
Ellis, Harold;
(2013)
Dr Thomas Aitchison Latta (c.1796--1833): Pioneer Of Intravenous Fluid Replacement in the Treatment of Cholera
(/isis/citation/CBB001421950/)
Book
Goulet Denis;
(2020)
Brève histoire des épidémies au Québec: Du choléra à la COVID-19
(/isis/citation/CBB318570787/)
Article
Alcalá Ferráez, Carlos;
(2012)
De miasmas a mosquitos: el pensamiento médico sobre la fiebre amarilla en Yucatán, 1890--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001420572/)
Book
Gaudillière, Jean-Paul;
Löwy, Ilana;
(2001)
Heredity and Infection: The History of Disease Transmission
(/isis/citation/CBB000101679/)
Article
Noymer, Andrew;
Jarosz, Beth;
(2008)
Causes of Death in Nineteenth-Century New England: The Dominance of Infectious Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB000930682/)
Book
Honigsbaum, Mark;
(2014)
A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics: Death, Panic and Hysteria, 1830--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001550988/)
Article
Almeida, Maria Antónia Pires de;
(2013)
Epidemics in the News: Health and Hygiene in the Press in Periods of Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB001320417/)
Article
Axelsson, P.;
(2009)
“Do Not Eat Those Apples; They've Been on the Ground!”: Polio Epidemics and Preventive Measures, Sweden 1880s--1940s
(/isis/citation/CBB000931885/)
Article
Lukas Engelmann;
(2021)
An Epidemic for Sale: Observation, Modification, and Commercial Circulation of the Danysz Virus, 1890–1910
(/isis/citation/CBB194783319/)
Article
Maria Conforti;
(2021)
History of Epidemics: A Bibliographical Essay on Secondary Sources in Italian and on Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB899693707/)
Thesis
Alexandre I. R. White;
(2018)
Epidemic Orientalism: Social Construction and the Global Management of Infectious Disease
(/isis/citation/CBB944989698/)
Book
Jacques Pépin;
(2021)
The Origins of AIDS
(/isis/citation/CBB084551418/)
Book
Koch, Tom;
(2011)
Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground
(/isis/citation/CBB001250403/)
Book
Richard Andrew McKay;
(2017)
Patient Zero and the Making of the Aids Epidemic
(/isis/citation/CBB093085222/)
Article
Treena Warren;
(2017)
Holy Horror: Medicine, Martyrs, and the Photographic Image 1860–1910
(/isis/citation/CBB573204202/)
Book
Claudia Addabbo;
Stefano Casati;
(2022)
L'occhio della scienza
(/isis/citation/CBB760217668/)
Article
Werner, Georges H.;
(2009)
Histoire de certaines maladies infectieuses: leur éradication est-elle utopique ?
(/isis/citation/CBB000933415/)
Be the first to comment!