Network launch seminar: The Ethics of Medical Photograph: Past, Present and Future

Join us online for the launch event of this new AHRC Research Network.

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 urgent 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.

Our first online seminar brings together Beatriz Pichel (De Montfort University, project PI), Katherine Rawling (University of Leeds, project Co-I), Toni Hardy (Wellcome Collection) and Andreas Pantazatos (University of Cambridge) to introduce the network and its aims as well as discuss some of the main ethical dilemmas that historians, heritage specialists and collections managers are facing in relation to medical photography. 

Find out more about the network on the project webpage.

Image Credit

William E. Gray, A hand held over a dark mark on a forearm, to demonstrate the manual treatment of ulcers. Photograph. Wellcome Collection. Source: Wellcome Collection. License: Public Domain Mark.