Visual Plague

The Emergence of Epidemic Photography

Christos Lynteris

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English

MIT Press
15 December 2022

Public health & preventive medicine

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the ""pandemic.""

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the ""pandemic.""

In Visual Plague, Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894-1959), a global pandemic of bubonic plague that led to over twelve million deaths. Unlike medical photography, epidemic photography was not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with exposing the patient's body or medical examinations and operations. Instead, it played a key role in reconceptualizing infectious diseases by visualizing the ""pandemic"" as a new concept and structure of experience-one that frames and responds to the smallest local outbreak of an infectious disease as an event of global importance and consequence.

As the third plague pandemic struck more and more countries, the international circulation of plague photographs in the press generated an unprecedented spectacle of imminent global threat. Nothing contributed to this sense of global interconnectedness, anticipation, and fear more than photography. Exploring the impact of epidemic photography at the time of its emergence, Lynteris highlights its entanglement with colonial politics, epistemologies, and aesthetics, as well as with major shifts in epidemiological thinking and public health practice. He explores the characteristics, uses, and impact of epidemic photography and how it differs from the general corpus of medical photography. The new photography was used not simply to visualize or illustrate a pandemic, but to articulate, respond to, and unsettle key questions of epidemiology and epidemic control, as well as to foster the notion of the ""pandemic,"" which continues to affect our lives today.

By: Christos Lynteris
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262544221
ISBN 10: 0262544229
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 15 December 2022
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews and coauthor of Sulphuric Utopias (MIT Press).