Kathleen C.

Regrettably, modern medical photography is far removed from the shadowed depths of humanity it once captured in vintage clinical portraits like these. Besides the issues of privacy, there just isn’t enough time or money. Moreover, the concerns of science are given to studying the complexities of disease and scant interest is given to studying the complexion of disease. A morphology that proceeds from the assumption that disease is manifestly various and individuating for each patient would have to photograph every freckle and document every behavioral quirk. Today the medical photographer is either a photomicrographer or required to frame only those affected areas of the anatomy which pertain to a very specific taxonomy of pathogenesis and treatment. It is the weight of the epidemological model which tilts scientific inquiry toward the appliance end and upends any credibility for an aesthetic model.

7