Main description:

In Doctored, Tanya Sheehan takes a new look at the relationship between photography and medicine in American culture from the nineteenth century to the present. Sheehan focuses on Civil War and postbellum Philadelphia, exploring the ways in which medical models and metaphors helped strengthen the professional legitimacy of the city's commercial photographic community at a time when it was not well established. By reading the trade literature and material practices of portrait photography and medicine in relation to one another, she shows how their interaction defined the space of the urban portrait studio as well as the physical and social effects of studio operations. Integrating the methods of social art history, science studies, and media studies, Doctored reveals important connections between the professionalization of American photographers and the construction of photography's cultural identity.

Contents:

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1 Educating "Doctors of Photography": Medical Models and the Institutionalization of Photographic Knowledge

2 Making Faces and Taking Off Heads: The Operations of Photography and Medicine

3 "Panes Curing Pains": Light as Medicine in the Photographic Studio

4 A Matter of Public Health: Photographic Chemistry and the (Re)production of Healthy Bodies

5 Photo Doctors and Pixel Surgeons: The Medicine of Photography in the Digital Age

Appendix: Philadelphia Photographic Periodicals, 1864-1890

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index