I’ve seen an upturn in the number of historical patient photographs being shared on Twitter at the moment and I have THOUGHTS. Bill Jay, in ‘The Romantic Machine’, says ‘What a photograph looks like tells us precious little about its meaning’. /1

Meaning *also* resides in the reasons for a photograph being taken, its ability to generate new values, or to cement long-standing prejudices and preconceptions. And the meaning of a photograph is subject to change over time. /2

Each time we re-use a photo in academic work or on social media we add to that proliferation of meaning, crafting what we might call an ‘accumulative history’ that we are a part of. /3

Jane Nicholas, in ‘A Debt to the Dead’, writes about handling a photo of children who were in an early c20 sideshow: ‘I hold in my hands evidence of exploited bodies that implicates me in the legacies of inequality and vulnerability.’ https://muse.jhu.edu/article/546763  /4

When I used a photo of a c19 asylum patient in my book, I wasn’t sure if I should use it. What did it add? Was it necessary? If I was to do the book now I wouldn’t use it. Why did I need a photo to have insight into his story? His casebook records were evocative enough. /5

He'd been a “specimen” illustrating a condition when he was alive, years later he had become an illustration of my historical argument. I think of Mieke Bal’s ‘The Politics of Citation’: Is reproduction an act of complicity? Is it ‘re-Othering’ the patient for a new purpose? /6

Ethical considerations re: re-use multiply in a digital world when any image can find its way into search results; we bear responsibility for putting images out there. We have *no* control over what someone else does with them (see Suzannah Biernoff on Bioshock, for example). /7

I keep spotting images that make me think of what Bal’s phrase: ‘the combination of exuberant illustration with poverty of explanation.’ /8

Foregrounding images to ‘hook’ people into a story we can inadvertently present the image as an end in itself: something that evokes a strong emotional response but not necessarily deeper critical engagement. /9

To quote Susan Crane (speaking here on atrocity images, but I think the point is relevant): ‘The meanings of the past are our responsibility, and they are perpetually at risk’. I’m not saying we *shouldn’t* use images, but please think about why & how they’re being used. /10 FIN