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.
