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The Disabled Body in Contemporary Art
This volume analyzes the representation of disabled and disfigured bodies in contemporary art and its various contexts, from art history to photography to medical displays to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century freak show.
- GenresArtDisabilityNonfiction
186 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 22, 2025
2,5 stars. Trigger warning: the author declares within the first three sentences of this book that her own work is ‘groundbreaking’. This obnoxious lack of humility (gotta love academia) stands in contrast with her dull writing style and schematic approach to each chapter. However, the book does provide an interesting (if limited) survey of disability in contemporary art.
Artists discussed in this book include: Mary Duffy, Joel-Peter Witkin, Renée Cox, Sandie Yi, Susan Harbage Page, Marc Quinn, Frida Kahlo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kevin Connolly, Ricardo Gil, Persimmon Blackbridge, Laura Swanson, and Ann Millet-Gallant herself.
‘People with disabilities are intrinsically heterogenous. Disability studies faces the challenge of defining “the disabled” as a group because of the range of impairments and experiences encompass.’ (p. 5)
‘Disability displays not just an opposition to, but also a resistance to conformity standardisation, and the “normal”; in this project, I fixate on artistic examples that revel in corporeal difference, specifically through visual displays of the body. Perhaps more vividly than other markers of identity, disability and its “otherness”, or deviation from the norm, is inscribed on the body and attracts attention to the bodies visible and functional irregularities.‘ (p. 5)
‘Disabled people share and combat long histories of being exploited and portrayed derogatoraly in visual culture, while being simultaneously shamed, stigmatised and politically erased. Quite often disabled characters in literature, film, television, art and other media are symbols of something other than human something tragic or derogatory, such as social decay or psychic breakdown, and display the symbolic connotations on their body.’ (p. 6)
‘Garland-Thompson argues that photography is engaged specifically in problematic dynamics of diagnostic gazing and staring at bodies. She identifies the discourses of disability operating in photographs under four formal rhetorics: the woundrous, the sentimental, the exotic and the realistic, stressing that these rhetorics necessarily overlap in each image. (…) Photography provides a means for reproducing and circulating problematic images of disability, as well as provides the opportunity for the distanced viewer to stare at and diagnose the disabled body.’ (p. 7)
‘Many clinical images objectified their subjects by blocking their eyes (…) Technicians (many of whom were physicians) blocked the eyes when developing the image, or covered the face of the subject with a veil or blindfold, making the body anonymous for the benefit of patient and the physician or other viewer, such that the subject could be examined with objective, impersonal disinterest. Shielding of the eyes was seen more predominantly in especially freakish or curious subjects and those of lower socio-economic status. This technique provided for more protection for the viewer of the photograph than the subject, however, for this blocking of the wyes meant to maintain the patients’ dignity, functioner rather to impose shame and impeded a returned gaze, preventing the patients’ agency as individuals to transcend the medical frame.’ (p. 67)
‘Early medical photography often represented low income immigrant or otherwise “underprivileged” subjects to convey medicine as improving society. It often solicited models or patients who would place their bodies on public display, like still life objects and the possessions of science, in exchange for medical services.’ (p. 82)
Artists discussed in this book include: Mary Duffy, Joel-Peter Witkin, Renée Cox, Sandie Yi, Susan Harbage Page, Marc Quinn, Frida Kahlo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Kevin Connolly, Ricardo Gil, Persimmon Blackbridge, Laura Swanson, and Ann Millet-Gallant herself.
‘People with disabilities are intrinsically heterogenous. Disability studies faces the challenge of defining “the disabled” as a group because of the range of impairments and experiences encompass.’ (p. 5)
‘Disability displays not just an opposition to, but also a resistance to conformity standardisation, and the “normal”; in this project, I fixate on artistic examples that revel in corporeal difference, specifically through visual displays of the body. Perhaps more vividly than other markers of identity, disability and its “otherness”, or deviation from the norm, is inscribed on the body and attracts attention to the bodies visible and functional irregularities.‘ (p. 5)
‘Disabled people share and combat long histories of being exploited and portrayed derogatoraly in visual culture, while being simultaneously shamed, stigmatised and politically erased. Quite often disabled characters in literature, film, television, art and other media are symbols of something other than human something tragic or derogatory, such as social decay or psychic breakdown, and display the symbolic connotations on their body.’ (p. 6)
‘Garland-Thompson argues that photography is engaged specifically in problematic dynamics of diagnostic gazing and staring at bodies. She identifies the discourses of disability operating in photographs under four formal rhetorics: the woundrous, the sentimental, the exotic and the realistic, stressing that these rhetorics necessarily overlap in each image. (…) Photography provides a means for reproducing and circulating problematic images of disability, as well as provides the opportunity for the distanced viewer to stare at and diagnose the disabled body.’ (p. 7)
‘Many clinical images objectified their subjects by blocking their eyes (…) Technicians (many of whom were physicians) blocked the eyes when developing the image, or covered the face of the subject with a veil or blindfold, making the body anonymous for the benefit of patient and the physician or other viewer, such that the subject could be examined with objective, impersonal disinterest. Shielding of the eyes was seen more predominantly in especially freakish or curious subjects and those of lower socio-economic status. This technique provided for more protection for the viewer of the photograph than the subject, however, for this blocking of the wyes meant to maintain the patients’ dignity, functioner rather to impose shame and impeded a returned gaze, preventing the patients’ agency as individuals to transcend the medical frame.’ (p. 67)
‘Early medical photography often represented low income immigrant or otherwise “underprivileged” subjects to convey medicine as improving society. It often solicited models or patients who would place their bodies on public display, like still life objects and the possessions of science, in exchange for medical services.’ (p. 82)
February 19, 2022
This is such an important book! Millett-Gallant provides very clear explanations of key concepts she uses from disability theory to analyze contemporary artworks either made by or featuring disabled people. Her choice of artists is excellent and I think her own participation in an artwork (Joel-Peter Witkin's Retablo) provides a really interesting dimension to the book.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews