Thesis by Beatriz Pichel
Papers by Beatriz Pichel
This article aims to determine to what extent photographic practices in psychology, psychiatry an... more This article aims to determine to what extent photographic practices in psychology, psychiatry and physiology contributed to the definition of the external bodily signs of passions and emotions in the second half of the 19 th century in France. Bridging the gap between recent research in the history of emotions and photographic history, the following analyses focus on the photographic production of scientists and photographers who made significant contributions to the study of expressions and gestures, namely Duchenne de Boulogne, Charles Darwin, Paul Richer and Albert Londe. This article argues that photography became a key technology in their works due to the adequateness of the exposure time of different cameras to the duration of the bodily manifestations to be recorded, and that these uses constituted facial expressions and bodily gestures as particular objects for the scientific study.
Krieg und Literatur/ War and Literature, 2014
This paper addresses the question of the social and political meaning of death during the First W... more This paper addresses the question of the social and political meaning of death during the First World War in France. Following Judith Butler’s analysis on Frames of War and Bodies that Matter, this paper examines how the practice of photography shaped the sense of death by means of the visual construction of the dead body. The analyses carried out by this research will show that only the bodies that could enable to embody a particular notion of masculinity were regarded as dead for France. In this way, this paper aims to demonstrate that not all the war dead were considered as “dead by France”, and the political aspects of this distinction.
This paper discusses the construction of the collective experience of suffering during the First ... more This paper discusses the construction of the collective experience of suffering during the First World War in France. In particular, it examines how this experience was largely shaped by its photographic representations and the political and military readings of the images. This analysis will focus on the battle of Verdun (21st February-15 th December 1916), one of the bloodiest and largest in the Western Front. The interest of this battle lies in its paradoxical character: although the French army defeated the German, it also experienced a great number of casualties. This is why the collective imaginary turned Verdun into a symbol of the French courage, endurance and suffering.
Amongst the most terrifying injuries experienced by the soldiers during the First World War (1914... more Amongst the most terrifying injuries experienced by the soldiers during the First World War (1914–1918) were facial wounds. The French Medical Corps took photographic portraits of these wounded men, the so-called gueules cassées, with a view to conducting reconstructive surgery. However, other groups were quick to use the images they produced for their own political, social or artistic purposes. These photographs then, with their many meanings, capture the diversity of attitudes towards the Great War in its aftermath.
Paideia, Jan 1, 2008
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Talks by Beatriz Pichel
This presentation explores how photography has been practiced in the hospital during the nineteen... more This presentation explores how photography has been practiced in the hospital during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, it examines the development of photographic departments in medical institutions. I will take the French hospital of La Salpêtrière as an example, as it provides important elements of analysis of institutionalized uses of photography. In spite of its exceptionality, some of these elements were actually shared by other hospitals. In this section, I will not only interrogate the reasons why a photographic laboratory was set up, but also questions such as the provenance of funding, the training of the photographer, the particular photographic equipment, the space of the laboratory and the tacit rules of interaction between photographers, medical staff and patients. This kind of photographic production has been identified as 'medical photography' by most of the scholarship. However, this paper will show that medical photographic practices were more varied than this material. With this aim, I will compare this situation with the photographic production of hospitals which did not have their own photographic service. In these cases, like the Leicester Royal Infirmary, they hired local professional photographers to take pictures of patients, hospital facilities and staff. How were these photographs taken? Did these photographers bring the studio to the hospital –or was medicine brought to the studio? Through these questions, I aim to show that acknowledging the variety of photographic practices at medical institutions allows situating medicine in its cultural, social and economic contexts. Author: Dr Beatriz Pichel is part time lecturer at de Montfort University and the University of Nottigham. She has just finished her Wellcome Trust Fellowship project at the PHRC, DMU, which focuses on photography, emotions and psychology at the turn of the nineteenth century in France. Her new project develops a critical analysis of the category 'medical photography'.
This paper will explore the photographic archive of the gueules cassées preserved at the Parisian... more This paper will explore the photographic archive of the gueules cassées preserved at the Parisian hospital Val de Grâce. This medical archive is compounded by series of photographs that document the different stages of the facial injuries and reconstructive surgeries experienced by French soldiers during the First World War. By means of the analysis of the different meanings attached to these photographs during and after the war, this paper attempts to determine the specific role played by photography in the social, cultural and medical understanding of war disfigurement. With this aim in mind, this article will proceed in three steps. First, it will examine the cultural discourses about the gueules cassées that were created in the post-war years. Especially, the focus will be on the dynamics between the uses of photographs and their absence from public discourses that linked facial mutilations to the loss of humanity. Second, this paper will analyse the specificity of these medical records by comparing them to other similar photographs, especially to the images of bodily mutilations. Finally, this paper will trace the history of the different photographic constructions of facial and bodily mutilations. In particular, it will argue that the use of photography at the turn of the 19 th century in scientific debates on facial expressions and bodily gestures as the locus of human emotions created the conditions under which disfigurement could be understood as the loss of humanity.
This paper will trace the history of the scientific uses of photography in psychological and psyc... more This paper will trace the history of the scientific uses of photography in psychological and psychiatric studies of emotions at the end of the nineteenth century in France. In particular, the focus of its analysis will be on the role that photography played in the increasing scientific interest for bodily gestures, instead of facial expressions, as the embodied signs of human emotions. A key question in this regard will be the different ways in which photography approached movement either to freeze it in one particular instant or to capture it through a succession of images. The reconstruction of this history aims to provide a historical framework to understand the values and assumptions still embedded into current scientific practices of photography in the field of emotional studies.
Call for Papers & Conference Programs by Beatriz Pichel
This panel invites contributions that tackle how photographic history can contribute to develop f... more This panel invites contributions that tackle how photographic history can contribute to develop further questions traditionally explored in cultural and social history. Based on particular case studies, papers will show different methodologies and research strategies to use photography as a historical source. With this aim, they will explore questions such as how the use of photographic sources has brought to light new problems or has changed the way in which a particular event is related. The aim of the panel is to demonstrate that photographic history is not (only) the history of photographs, but rather a new historical approach.
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Thesis by Beatriz Pichel
Papers by Beatriz Pichel
Talks by Beatriz Pichel
Call for Papers & Conference Programs by Beatriz Pichel
The emergence of psychology as a scientific discipline and the popularization of photography occurred in parallel in the last third of the nineteenth century. Since then, photographs have been used in psychological experiments, and psychological theories of perception have been applied to understand the reception of photography. Whereas much research has been done on these topics, only sparse scholarly literature has attended to other aspects such as the role that photographic images played in the configuration of psychological and psychiatric thinking in the nineteenth century, and the ways in which psychological findings have penetrated into popular culture by means of photography.
“Photographic Histories of Psychology” will contribute to this scholarship by reflecting on how photographic materials have circulated through scientific and non-scientific contexts. It proposes to analyse the ways in which professional and amateur photography have historically appropriated, negotiated, rejected and disseminated psychological ideas. Rather than focusing on the notion of photographic representation or its meaning, we invite contributors to examine how, for example, psychological definitions of memory have affected the notion of the archive and the family album; how psychological theories on emotions have incited different gestures and expressions in front of the camera; and what role the illustrated press has played in the dissemination or depathologization of psychological disorders. Conversely, the event also seeks to examine how practices such as photographing, collecting photographs, or posing for the camera have penetrated into psychological discourses. How, for instance, particular uses of photography have inspired psychological research into historically specific patterns of behaviour.
Plenary Lecture: Dr. Mathew Thomson (University of Warwick) “Photography and the Landscape of the Child in Twentieth Century Britain”
We welcome original studies that focus on any historical period, carried out within the arts and humanities or the social sciences. While the event is open to scholars at any career level, we particularly encourage applications from postgraduate students and early career researchers. An abstract of no more than 300 words for a 20 minutes presentation, along with the title, name and affiliation, should be sent to Dr. Beatriz Pichel (beatriz.pichel@dmu.ac.uk) by the 15th of August. Accepted papers will be notified by the 1st of September.