Medical Archives and Digital Culture: From WWI to BioShock

Abstract

Over the last few years my research has focused on representations of the injured body and face in First World War Britain. Some of the most intriguing cases are those in which art and medicine seem to converge or redefine each other, as in Henry Tonks' delicate pastel portraits of British servicemen with severe facial injuries, and the equally exquisite – and unsettling – prosthetic masks made by the sculptor Francis Derwent Wood for some of these patients to conceal their disfigurement when surgical reconstruction was impossible. In both of these examples, art could be said to ameliorate – and in different ways to aestheticise – the horrors of war, and to humanise men who had suffered what were considered at the time to be the most dehumanising of injuries. In both cases, the sources that have survived contain assumptions – often unspoken – about how, where and by whom the injured body may be seen – assumptions that have changed over time. My current project considers the afterlives of some of these documents. When we encounter medical images in art galleries or on television – or in the pages of an academic journal – what kind of cultural and imaginative work do they perform? Are there ethical considerations raised by their re-deployment or appropriation within the contexts of art and entertainment, education and academic research?