This network brings together a multidisciplinary team of historians of photography, medicine and colonialism, philosophers, social scientists, archivists and artistic and documentary photographers in partnership with the Wellcome Collection. Our purpose is to examine how we can display, preserve and write about historical medical photographs in an ethical way.
We have three main aims:
1) to widen access to early medical photographs while protecting both historical subjects and present viewers.
2) to broaden the range of ethical questions we ask of early medical photographs. We believe that current ethical codes that apply to contemporary medical photographs do not work with historical material. For instance, patients did not consent to have their photographs taken because the concept of “informed consent” did not exist in the nineteenth century.
3) to challenge the racist, ableist and other damaging legacies of many of these photographs. We believe it is ethically necessary to confront photographic representations that have highly stigmatised certain groups and conditions, for instance children with learning disabilities, and that are still embedded in current collection, cataloguing and classification practices.
To achieve these aims, we will organise a series of events around three strategic areas: research, collection management and public engagement.
This network has received funding from the AHRC Research Networking Award from July 2024 until June 2026.
Image credit: Salpêtrière glass plate negative collection, Identifier: 15c (Negative: 02534) Box 386 (B3). Center for the History of Medicine, Countway Library, Harvard University.