Book ID: CBB626555795

Portraits of Violence: War and the Aesthetics of Disfigurement (2017)

unapi

Biernoff, Suzannah (Author)


University of Michigan Press


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 224 pp.
Language: English

Portraits of Violence explores the image and idea of facial disfigurement in one of its most troubling modern formations, as a symbol and consequence of war. It opens with Nina Berman’s iconic photograph Marine Wedding, which provoked a debate about the medical, military, and psychological response to serious combat injuries. While these issues remain urgent, it is equally crucial to interrogate the representation of war and injury. The concepts of valor, heroism, patriotism, and courage assume visible form and do their cultural work when they are personified and embodied. The mutilated or disabled veteran’s body can connote the brutalizing, dehumanizing potential of modern combat.   Suzannah Biernoff draws on a wide variety of sources mainly from WWI but also contemporary photography and computer games. Each chapter revolves around particular images: Marine Wedding is discussed alongside Stuart Griffiths’ portraits of British veterans; Henry Tonks’ drawings of WWI facial casualties are compared to the medical photographs in the Gillies Archives; the production of portrait masks for the severely disfigured is approached through the lens of documentary film and photography; and finally the haunting image of one of Tonks’s patients reappears in BioShock, a highly successful computer game. The book simultaneously addresses a neglected area in disability studies; puts disfigurement on the agenda for art history and visual studies; and makes a timely and provocative contribution to the literature on the First World War.

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Reviewed By

Review Ana Carden-Coyne (2018) Review of "Portraits of Violence: War and the Aesthetics of Disfigurement". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 400-401). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB626555795/

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Authors & Contributors
Michael Robinson
Ruoppolo, Giuseppe
Fitzpatrick, K. Meghan
Fusco, Roberta
Sarah Handley-Cousins
Bate, Jason
Concepts
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Disabilities; disability; accessibility
World War I
Veterans
Surgery
Medicine
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
20th century, late
18th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
Commonwealth countries
Czechoslovakia
Americas
Poland
Institutions
Canada. Canadian Army. Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps
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