Notes on a Set of Vintage Clinical Portraits

by Mark Rowley

Josephine F.

The images presented here come from a set of 204 paper mount slides dating from the late 1930’s to early 1940’s. They are encased in two black buckram boxes with identical silver deco clasps, but with different gold stamping that reads “Slide File” on one box and “B & J Lantern Slides” on the other. Inside the cover of each box is a legend written by a tidy hand on a placard and held in place with a wire brad.

All I know about the collection is that they were found in a storage bin which was located in New Mexico and came up for auction. The seller could offer no other history than that he believed the set was photographed by a radiologist who graduated from Duke University. This is reasonable because a radiologist more than any other specialist would have the feel for compositional lighting and the photographic skill so apparent in these images.

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