Doctored: The Medicine of Photography in Nineteenth-Century America

by Tanya Sheehan

In Doctored , Tanya Sheehan takes a new look at the relationship between photography and medicine in American culture from the nineteenth century to the present. Sheehan focuses on Civil War and postbellum Philadelphia, exploring the ways in which medical models and metaphors helped strengthen the professional legitimacy of the city’s commercial photographic community at a time when it was not well established. By reading the trade literature and material practices of portrait photography and medicine in relation to one another, she shows how their interaction defined the space of the urban portrait studio as well as the physical and social effects of studio operations. Integrating the methods of social art history, science studies, and media studies, Doctored reveals important connections between the professionalization of American photographers and the construction of photography’s cultural identity.

Genres: Photography

216 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 2011

Reviews

[Gyewon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very looking forward to this book since I attended the author's presentation. Intro is great and thought-provoking, and chapter 3 and 4 are my favorites. The book uncovers photography’s medical roots, through extensive archival research of the commercial portraiture in the Philadelphia area. The author expanded her historical and theoretical inquiries to the question of race, nationality and faciality. The discourse of “rehabilitation” was the main locus where photography, medicine and the body intersected each other, especially after the Civil War, at the time when both the desirable American face and the incorporation of different races into “American” were requisite. Importantly and interestingly, the author locates material elements and practices of photo studios precisely at the point of the connection between medicine, the body and nationality. The author’s discussion about “blue light” is particularly compelling – the light that was believed to have a therapeutic effect, whereby promising a mass “whitening” of the nation’s urban population. Wonderful book!