Picturing Disability: Beggar, Freak, Citizen and Other Photographic Rhetoric (Critical Perspectives on Disability) - Hardcover

Bogdan, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0815633025 ISBN 13: 9780815633020

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 2012

Synopsis

Midget, feeble-minded, crippled, lame and insane: these terms and the historical photographs that accompany them may seem shocking to present-day audiences. A young woman with no arms wears a sequined tutu and smiles for the camera as she holds a tea cup with her toes; a man holds up two prosthetic leges while his own legs are bared to the knees to show his missing feet. The photos were used as promotional material for circus sideshows, charity drives, and hung in art galleries. They were found on begging cards and in family albums. In Picturing Disability Bogdan and his collaborators gather over 200 historical photographs showing how people with disabilities have been presented and exploring the contexts in which they were photographed.
     Rather than focus on the subjects. Bogdan turns his gaze on the people behind the camera. He examines the historic and cultural environment of the photographs to decipher the relationship between the images and the perspectives of the picture makers. In analyzing the visual rhetoric of these photographs, Bogdan identifies the wide variety of genres, from sideshow souvenirs to clinical photographs. Ranging from the 1860s, when photographs first became readily available, to the 1970s, when the disability rights movement became a force for significant change, Bogdan chronicles the evolution of disability image creation. Picturing Disability takes the reader beyond judging images as positive or slanderous to reveal how particular contexts generate specific emotions and lasting depictions.

About this title

About the Author:

Bogdan resides in Orwell, VT. Previous Books: Real Photo Postcard Guide: the People’s Photography and Beauty and the Beast: Human-Animal Relations as Revealed in Real Photo Postcards, 1905-1935

Review:

"CHOICE Outstanding Title for 2013"

"The stunning archive of images that Bogdan and his co-authors have amassed is a major contribution to the growing body of analysis of disability representation in photography. This book brings incisive, expert historical perspective to more familiar terrain and at the same time opens up important new avenues of exploration."
Susan Schweik, University of California at Berkeley

"This book makes a substantial contribution to the history of visual representation of disability in the United States. It should become an important resource to those who seek to understand the varieties of contexts and purposes in which people with disabilities were portrayed by others, and---equally important---portrayed themselves."
Philip Ferguson, Chapman University

"...Bogdan's book is one of the most non-exploitative and morally responsible recent projects on physical anomaly..."
Jack David Eller, Anthropology Review Database, January, 2013.

"Read this fascinating book in one sitting, and follow the author's instructions to carefully examine the photographs before and after reading the text. Bogdan (Syracuse Univ.) has given readers the pictorial evidence of the social construction of disability, and he points out masterfully how it is the photographer's point of view that is revealed, and not the lived experience of people with disabilities who are the objects of these images. This point is complicated, however, by people with disabilities who used their own images to promote themselves as a method of earning a living.... ... the historical content helps readers understand and appreciate disability as it exists in the 21st century. Bogdan provides the pictorial evidence of the construction of disability. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries."
P. A. Murphy, University of Toledo

"...a fascinating overview of the history of the photography of people with disabilities in the United States... compelling... highly recommended to anyone interested in the lives of people with disabilities and their representation within society."
Thomas Malcomson, Professor, George Brown College, The Social Role Valorization Journal

"...a visual treasure trove..." "...of great value to scholars of disability as well as those studying poverty, charity, art, film, and the family, among other topics, in the late ninetieth- and twentieth century America." Laurel Daen, William and Mary, on H-Net

"...of great interest to anyone with a broad interest in disability studies, and in the social history of photography, and it is a required source for any academic program that touches on these topics." Ron Amundson, U. of Hawaii, on Behavioral Connections

"The contribution of this work to the field of disability studies cannot be overstated..." "Its noteworthy coverage and fresh insights make it a terrific contribution to the field."
Melinda C. Hall, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

"On the whole, Picturing Disability is a fine example of visual sociology. It discerns patterns in a large body of images that pervade the culture, aptly analyzes the content and structure of those images, and insightfully interprets them in context. There is a useful model here for doing sociology of any aspect of visual culture." Michael Schwalbe, Contemporary Sociology

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0815633025
• ISBN 13: 9780815633020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 216