The Ethics of Medical Photography: Past, Present and Future
Lead Research Organisation:
De Montfort University
Department Name: School of Humanities
Abstract
Archives, libraries and museums are increasingly opening their collections and placing them online. This is a welcome step to widening the access to historical materials, which thanks to digitisation are available for researchers all over the world as well as the public. However, some historical sources pose ethical challenges that are urgent to consider. This is the case of medical photographs, which often show vulnerable or identifiable patients, naked, in pain, restrained, sometimes underage, who did not consent to have their portrait taken. Sometimes even the act of taking the image was violent, coercive or exploitative. While current patients who are photographed are protected by medical ethics codes, the same safeguarding does not exist for patients photographed over a 100 years ago. Moreover, the public display of these images, which can be extremely graphic and are often accompanied by offensive language, can trigger present viewers.
This network will bring together a multidisciplinary team of historians of photography, medicine and colonialism, philosophers, social scientists, archivists and artistic and documentary photographers to examine how we can display, preserve and write about historical medical photographs in an ethical way. We have three main aims. The first is to widen access to early medical photographs while protecting both historical subjects and present viewers. Our second aim is 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. Our third aim is 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. The activities will include online academic seminars, specialised workshops with archivists, librarians and curators, public engagement workshops and an Early Career Researchers training workshop. The focus of these events will be on co-creating new ways of displaying, preserving and writing about historical medical photographs.
We will publicise our results through the first journal Special Issue on the ethics of medical photography, which we plan to submit to the Science Museum Group Journal, which is Open Access and therefore, available to everyone. The Special Issue will include 2 or 3 articles per strand, including one on best practice guidelines, or sensitivity guidelines, for heritage institutions that preserve medical photography collections, as well as for researchers. Our second output will be an Online Exhibition, which will put into practice the best practice guidelines. The exhibition will be curated by members of the network based on the discussions and suggestions from the workshops, including innovative ways of showing the images and alternative approaches for labelling and describing medical photographs. In line with our co-creation strategies, the Online Exhibition will also allow for feedback and comments from users.
This network will bring together a multidisciplinary team of historians of photography, medicine and colonialism, philosophers, social scientists, archivists and artistic and documentary photographers to examine how we can display, preserve and write about historical medical photographs in an ethical way. We have three main aims. The first is to widen access to early medical photographs while protecting both historical subjects and present viewers. Our second aim is 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. Our third aim is 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. The activities will include online academic seminars, specialised workshops with archivists, librarians and curators, public engagement workshops and an Early Career Researchers training workshop. The focus of these events will be on co-creating new ways of displaying, preserving and writing about historical medical photographs.
We will publicise our results through the first journal Special Issue on the ethics of medical photography, which we plan to submit to the Science Museum Group Journal, which is Open Access and therefore, available to everyone. The Special Issue will include 2 or 3 articles per strand, including one on best practice guidelines, or sensitivity guidelines, for heritage institutions that preserve medical photography collections, as well as for researchers. Our second output will be an Online Exhibition, which will put into practice the best practice guidelines. The exhibition will be curated by members of the network based on the discussions and suggestions from the workshops, including innovative ways of showing the images and alternative approaches for labelling and describing medical photographs. In line with our co-creation strategies, the Online Exhibition will also allow for feedback and comments from users.
