The Ethics of Medical Photography: Past, Present, and Future

Partners and collaborators

Wellcome Collection

Description

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How can we view and work with historical medical photographs in an ethical way? How can we widen access to early medical photographs while respecting the dignity of both historical subjects and present viewers?

Archives, libraries and museums are increasingly opening their collections and placing them online. This is a welcome step to widening the access to historical materials, which thanks to digitisation are available for researchers all over the world as well as the public.

However, some historical sources pose ethical challenges that are urgent to consider. 

Medical photographs often show vulnerable or identifiable patients who did not consent to have their portrait taken. Sometimes even the act of taking the image was violent, coercive or exploitative. While current patients who are photographed are protected by medical ethics codes, the same safeguarding does not exist for patients photographed over a 100 years ago. Moreover, the public display of these images, which can be extremely graphic and are often accompanied by offensive language, can trigger present viewers.

Is the answer to simply not look? Or is there a way to balance the ethical needs of heritage institutions, researchers and the public? 

Over a period of two years (2024-26), this multidisciplinary network will bring together historians, ethicists, archivists, heritage scholars, artists, photographers, social scientists, and the public to generate theoretical and practical best practice resources to research, curate, and disseminate historical medical photographs in an ethical way.

Aims of the network

1. To widen access to early medical photographs while protecting both historical subjects and present viewers.
2. To broaden the range of ethical questions we ask of early medical photographs. Current ethical codes that apply to contemporary medical photographs (e.g. ‘informed consent’) do not work with historical material.
3. To challenge the racist, ableist and other damaging legacies of many of these photographs. It is ethically necessary to confront photographic representations that have highly stigmatised certain groups and conditions, that are still embedded in current collection, cataloguing and classification practices.

Network activities

To achieve these aims, we will organise a series of events around three strategic areas: research, collection management and public engagement. The activities include online academic seminars, specialised workshops with archivists, librarians and curators, public engagement workshops and an Early Career Researchers training workshop. The focus of these events will be on co-creating new ways of displaying, preserving and writing about historical medical photographs. Outputs will include the publication of a journal special issue, and an online exhibition.

Events

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UK Gateway to Research page for the project