2-9-23 Medical Photography and the Humanities

February 20, 2023

ID9524

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00:00Good afternoon. My name is Anna Reisman.
00:03I'm director of the Program
00:04for Humanities and Medicine,
00:05and I'm very pleased to welcome you to
00:08this special event that is a collaboration
00:10with the Medical Historical Library and
00:13my wonderful colleague, Melissa Graff.
00:15I am so grateful that Melissa
00:17reached out back in the fall,
00:19and I remember when it was to
00:20propose an event to celebrate the
00:22opening of this splendid exhibit,
00:24which which I think all of you
00:26know is entitled the medical lens.
00:28Highlights from the Stanley B Burns, MD.
00:30Medical photo collection.
00:32And after I make the introductions,
00:35Melissa will tell you a little bit
00:37more about how we got here today.
00:38But I want to just again say welcome
00:40now to our live and zoom audiences,
00:43and this particular event is called
00:45medical photography and the humanities,
00:47connecting history to practice.
00:50And I will introduce our speakers.
00:52So Doctor Stanley B Burns is an
00:55ophthalmologist and research professor of
00:57medicine and psychiatry and a professor
01:00of medical humanities at New York University.
01:03He's an internationally distinguished author,
01:05curator, historian,
01:06collector and archivist.
01:08He began collecting historic
01:10photography in 1975,
01:12with an emphasis on unique photographs
01:14not available anywhere else.
01:16Doctor Burns's collection of over
01:191,000,000 vintage photographs.
01:211840 to 1950 has been generally
01:23recognized as the most important private,
01:25comprehensive collection of early
01:27photography.
01:28In 1977, he founded the Burns
01:30Archive to share his discoveries,
01:32and he began his writing career.
01:34He has since written 50 photo historical
01:37texts and more than 1000 journal articles,
01:40and has curated more than 100 exhibitions.
01:43Maybe this is #101?
01:46He consults on feature films,
01:48documentaries and television series,
01:50and he was the medical,
01:52historical and technical adviser to
01:54the HBO Cinemax series The Nick,
01:56about a New York City hospital
01:58in the year 1900,
01:59as well as the PBS Civil War series Mercy St.
02:04And that was only like a little bit
02:05of the bike bio that I received,
02:07which is like this so.
02:11Chitra Ramalingam is an interdisciplinary
02:13curator and academic working
02:15between history of science,
02:17history of photography,
02:18and museum studies.
02:20She's been a postdoctoral research
02:21fellow at the Science Museum,
02:23London and the University of Cambridge,
02:25a photography curator at the
02:26Yale Center for British Art,
02:27and is now on the faculty in the history of
02:29Science and Medicine program here at Yale,
02:31where she teaches courses on
02:33the visual material and sensory
02:35culture of science and develops
02:38experimental collaborative pedagogies
02:39around university collections.
02:41She's the author of to see a spark
02:44experiment and visual experience
02:45in Victorian science and Co,
02:47editor of William Henry Fox,
02:49Talbot beyond photography,
02:51which was published by Yale University Press.
02:55She is Co editor of the essays and
02:57Review section of the journal Historical
02:59Studies in the natural sciences and
03:01a member of the editorial collective
03:02for 100 histories of 100 Worlds.
03:04In one object,
03:05a dynamic collaborative project
03:07centering excluded voices and
03:08histories around objects from the
03:10global South in the British Museum.
03:12And a few weeks ago, late breaking news.
03:14She just began a new position
03:16at the Guggenheim.
03:18And finally,
03:19Melissa Graff is the head of the
03:21Medical Historical library here
03:22at the Yale School of Medicine.
03:24She joined Yale in 2011 as the John R
03:27Bumstead Library for medical librarian
03:29for medical history at the Harvey
03:31Cushing John Hay Whitney Medical Library.
03:34Melissa received her PhD in the
03:35history of medicine from Johns Hopkins
03:37in 20 oh nine and was a council of
03:39Library and Information Resources post
03:41DOC at Lehigh University Library.
03:43Melissa leads the Medical Historical
03:45Library team and manages the
03:47library's collections,
03:48including over 100,000 medical and scientific
03:51volumes from the 12th to 21st centuries,
03:54as well as a growing digital archive.
03:56She works with students and
03:58faculty on research and classes,
04:00develops grants and publications
04:02overseas major digitization projects.
04:04Curious in stages exhibits exhibitions,
04:06and manages donations, among other duties.
04:09Her most recent publication,
04:11treating the digital disease,
04:12the role of digital and physical primary
04:15sources in undergraduate teaching,
04:16considers the role of physical and digital
04:19collection in undergraduate education.
04:21So thank you again, Melissa,
04:23for proposing this event
04:24and putting it together.
04:26Thank you Karen Cole,
04:28the program manager.
04:31Of the humanities and medicine program.
04:32And thank you to our ASL interpreters,
04:34who are available on zoom.
04:36Everybody else involved in planning this,
04:38thank you so much.
04:46Good evening everyone and again
04:47thank you so much for joining us for
04:49this presentation for the kind of
04:51opening event for the medical lens,
04:53our new exhibition featuring the Stanley
04:56Burns Medical Photography Collection.
04:58You know, it's been a long time coming.
05:00We've worked together for many years,
05:01Doctor Burns and I to you know,
05:05look through the collection
05:07and share excitement about the
05:09medical photography that he has.
05:10He has much more in his in his home,
05:13but we're happy to have this
05:15part of the collection.
05:16We don't need,
05:17I don't think we need a million.
05:18I think Kathy would kill me.
05:19Our archives, so.
05:22And I also want to thank, you know,
05:25really the incredible historical library,
05:27my colleagues in the Medical Historical
05:29Library for all the work they've done
05:32in order to put the exhibit together,
05:34including Chris Solo, Kelly Perry,
05:36Terry Jagrati, Kathy Isham,
05:39Dana Howe, Melanie Norton.
05:41And hopefully I didn't miss anyone,
05:43but I have a Laura,
05:44Brian Miller, so who just.
05:46I also want to take this opportunity
05:49right now to make an announcement.
05:51I want to announce that Doctor Burns
05:55has kindly endowed a fellowship.
05:57For the study of his collection.
06:00So in the next week or two,
06:02we will be launching on our website
06:04on the application opening the
06:06applications for this new fellowship.
06:08It is the Stanley B Burns,
06:10MD Fellowship for the study of
06:13Medical Photographic history.
06:15It will provide up to $2000.00
06:17for a week of research.
06:19Here to delve into the Burns collection
06:22along with some affiliate material.
06:25So we welcome applications,
06:26we hope that.
06:27People can enjoy the collection as
06:30we have find out new and wonderful
06:33discoveries and as you know the questions
06:36thousands of images here so well,
06:38I think there will be a
06:39lot of research pathways.
06:40So without further ado,
06:41I'd like to introduce Doctor
06:43Burns and let him take the stage.
06:44Doctor burns?
06:57Well, thank you, Melissa.
06:59For inviting me here and having this
07:02opportunity and also to pass an issue
07:05helping to put this great exhibit on.
07:11The laser pointer,
07:13but we'll live without that.
07:16Photographs are the most important
07:18media to change opinion.
07:20Photographs indelibly etched the
07:22mind become part of 1 psyche.
07:24Iconic photographs are not easily forgotten.
07:28Since their introduction in 1839,
07:31photographs had played a
07:33Seminole role in medicine.
07:34Photographs educate physicians,
07:36document their work,
07:37provide research tools,
07:38teach physicians how to present
07:40themselves as professionals,
07:42and how to interact with patients.
07:45Sharing and publishing photographs
07:47provide visual intellectual communication.
07:49Photographs also help establish
07:51the public image of medicine.
07:53Photography has become the
07:55universal language of our time.
07:57Medical humanities attempts to expand
08:00health related thinking beyond
08:02strict medical scientific guidelines.
08:04How patients will be treated or not
08:07solely based on medical knowledge.
08:10Ethical and political judgments are
08:12components of healthcare decisions.
08:14Historic medical photographs have an
08:17important role in humanities educations.
08:19How physicians acted and how
08:21patients were treated in the past.
08:23The extent of disease people
08:25lived with social conditions.
08:27And especially the limits of
08:29past medical practice offers a
08:32perspective of medical action.
08:34Photographs illustrate the triumph,
08:36as well as the social errors and
08:38hubris of medical professionals.
08:40Empathy and compassion for patience
08:42and understanding the limits of what
08:45one knows and doesn't know should be
08:48driving forces in medical practice.
08:50Historic medical photographs help
08:52physicians learn empathy and compassion
08:55as they provide a visual expansion
08:57of personal experience of the human
09:00condition as they can relate the
09:02images to their own practice.
09:04Before the eight years I have been
09:07presenting historic medical photographs
09:09to medical and public audiences.
09:11I'm thrilled that the Yale University
09:14Medical Library now has my historic
09:16medical photography collection and
09:18that it is cherished, cared for it,
09:21and is available to a wide audience
09:24in perpetuity.
09:25I would like to share the history
09:27of the collection,
09:28and it's used as a tool of
09:30medical humanities.
09:36This is an example of my
09:38favorite medical photograph.
09:40Radiologists are in the audience.
09:41They will tell you that those people
09:44were probably dead in seven years.
09:46Oh, they're looking at a kidney.
09:49I'll take a few seconds to discuss that.
09:52This is how they did kidney operations.
09:54You had a kidney stone.
09:55They would slice the kidney if they
09:57didn't find it and that's how I turned
09:59the patient over slice the other side.
10:01But in 1897 with the invention
10:04of the fluoroscopy and the X-ray,
10:06they were able to once the kidney was
10:09taken out because they couldn't go
10:11through abdominal area at that time
10:13they would just X-ray the kidney.
10:15I'm in my 85th year.
10:19Let me just get my next slide.
10:21I was born in 1938 in Brownsville,
10:23Brooklyn, a year before World
10:25War Two started in Europe.
10:27the United States entered the war in 1941.
10:30I had 6 uncles in the war and I did my part.
10:34I had a victory garden,
10:35collected paper and especially
10:37aluminum foil from cigarette packs,
10:39and we saved cooking oil.
10:41While most of the country
10:43blatantly ignored the Holocaust,
10:44despite irrefutable evidence,
10:45in Brooklyn and other Jewish
10:48communities it was well known
10:50that Jews were being shot,
10:51gassed and burned to death and
10:54Jewish civilization destroyed.
10:56My part as a 7 year old was to collect
10:58funds for Jewish relief on the stairs
11:01of the elevated train lines at Saratoga.
11:04Giving you a 5:30 PM as people
11:06came home from work.
11:10Here is the 1943 text on the Holocaust.
11:14As you can see, Mrs.
11:15Roosevelt, other dignitaries,
11:17Albert Einstein, they all knew
11:20about the Holocaust extermination
11:21camps in 1942 and they did nothing.
11:24So at a young age I began my
11:27lifelong study of history to find
11:29out we got to our current situation.
11:34I've spent my life as an
11:36intellectual adventure,
11:37attempting to share my discoveries.
11:39Some know me best for my
11:41work on death related topics.
11:44On display is the postmortem
11:46daguerreotype of doctor Samuel Howe,
11:48a young physician who died fighting
11:51the cholera epidemic in 1849.
11:53The image was taken to memorialize him,
11:56a once common practice.
11:58My interest in death and
12:01dying issues stemmed.
12:03From my medical school years at Syracuse,
12:06I had befriended one of my professors,
12:09cultural anthropologist Dr.
12:10Ernest Becker.
12:12Becker was trying to answer the question,
12:14what makes people act the way they do.
12:17I studied that question from
12:20a historical perspective.
12:21Death was the cultural taboo
12:23of the 20th century,
12:25as six was the cultural
12:27taboo of the 19th century.
12:29My books and exhibitions on postmortem
12:31and medical photography supported
12:33Becker's concern with death anxiety.
12:36How we deal with death is a challenge
12:39many physicians face every day.
12:43John Gardner, novelist and
12:44literary critic, was a friend.
12:46I helped him write his first novel,
12:48The Resurrection,
12:49which integrated death anxiety philosophy.
12:52The book was pulp.
12:53There were only about 50 copies sold,
12:55and I was offered over $20,000 for this
12:58book and the documents I had with it.
13:01About 20 years ago,
13:02when he was very popular.
13:06Here's an interesting image.
13:08People always talk about provenance.
13:10Peter Buxton was the firearms
13:12dealer who convinced me to collect
13:15the Guerra types and photographs.
13:17Here is the South American Indians,
13:20the tumor of a jewel,
13:21which is now at Yale.
13:23And you have him and myself posed in
13:26a picture with another ambrotype,
13:29which is also now at the Yale Collection.
13:32This is the best kofinas you could ever get.
13:34Picture taken in the 70s.
13:36And that small picture in the
13:38center of doctor Alessio Acosta,
13:40who took the daguerreotype,
13:41will be in the Yale collection this year.
13:44And that's a picture of
13:46the person Robert Rubin,
13:47who first helped me get academic
13:49appointments in the history of medicine
13:51and also with my first exhibition.
13:55So during the 70s,
13:57I lectured on the Holocaust.
13:59This is some of the documents
14:00I collected at the time.
14:01The Holocaust was not a popular topic when
14:04it became popular at the end of the 70s,
14:06and Holocaust museums would be informed
14:08it was 30 years past the end of the war.
14:12But this is an example.
14:13The document on the right is part
14:15of a medical license for physicians.
14:18It lists all these subjects
14:20they're allowed to treat.
14:22On the bottom,
14:22it lists what they're not
14:23allowed to treat it.
14:24It's against the law to treat syphilis,
14:27gonorrhea or make serums.
14:29The document on the left is as
14:32you could see if you could see the
14:35underlying writing was issued by the Gestapo.
14:38It was issued to a Viennese
14:40physician so that he can go to the
14:43hospital and not have to and not
14:45be stopped to wash streets,
14:47which was very popular at the time.
14:50Anyway,
14:51this is part of my Holocaust
14:55document collection.
14:56I originally collected books.
14:57I then collected firearms
14:59and let me tell you,
15:00there is nothing that sells faster than
15:03an antique firearm in this country.
15:06And so when I started to collect photographs,
15:09I sold my collection and I had
15:11over 400 really rare guns.
15:13It was again a window opportunities
15:15in in the early 60s.
15:16I've always taken advantage of
15:18that window of opportunity to
15:21collect historic topics.
15:22I began as you heard,
15:24collecting photographs in 75.
15:26And in 77 started my interest in
15:31sharing my archive by publications.
15:35This is the first journal cover
15:37I did November of 77.
15:39I had written three articles
15:40before this and had presented it
15:42a couple of medical meetings.
15:46This is 1978, only three years
15:48after I started my collection.
15:50My collection was recognized by time life
15:52because of the exhibits and lectures as
15:54the best emerging collection as you can
15:56see the first sentence there are few
15:58collectibles have gone from trash to
16:00treasure and as abruptly as old photographs.
16:04But that is a long time ago.
16:08My first major exhibition
16:09I had 1000 photographs.
16:11I called it 1000 words and my first major.
16:15Lecture. I then started writing early
16:20medical photography in America,
16:21which became a classic.
16:23It hasn't been much improved upon.
16:26And those are some of the New
16:28York State Journal covers.
16:31These are some of the offprints
16:34from the early journals.
16:35And which was the most popular ones?
16:37Which was civil war medical photography,
16:39which is a thread that has run through
16:42my collection the last 50 years,
16:44and medical publications with photographs.
16:48My most famous picture,
16:50the breakthrough in medicine and art,
16:53came with Ingrid Sischy,
16:54who was a major editor of the Time,
16:56Publishing my article under her
16:59editorship in Art Form magazine.
17:02And I think all those pictures
17:04are at Yale now.
17:06As you'll see,
17:06I'll show some of the same pictures that
17:08I've published them in different journals.
17:09The point is,
17:10you could look at this picture and I
17:12could talk to about the 222 doctors
17:14learning professionalism and how to operate,
17:16or I could use this picture in oncology.
17:18Music magazine and explain how
17:20William Rodman was the leading
17:22breast surgeon of his time before
17:24William Halsted and and.
17:29This was my first exhibit at a medical
17:34convention and this and I actually.
17:37They're preserving the vision of
17:39American medicine became my tagline.
17:44And the bottom picture,
17:45the center picture is of became
17:47curator of the foundation of the
17:49American Academy of Ophthalmology.
17:51In the picture of health was the
17:54first public exhibition of medical
17:56photography in an art gallery,
17:58curated by Marvin Heiferman.
18:00Again, of course, that that famous
18:03picture which is outside here,
18:04so you could look at it as you as you go,
18:08as are all those other pictures.
18:10Yale has all these pictures.
18:14This is really the first medical humanities
18:18exhibition done here in Connecticut.
18:21And this is was 1985 and you could
18:23look at my really primitive, you know,
18:26pasted together list of photographs,
18:29but 1985? Long time ago.
18:35My greatest accomplishment in the 80s,
18:38something where my medical journals,
18:42Bristol Laboratories,
18:43underwrote a series of journals that I
18:47produced about four to six times a year,
18:51and they contained C22 issues,
18:53were made with 177 articles.
18:56These were they were between 28
19:00and 32,000 copies per issue,
19:02and they were sent to doctors in various.
19:05Professions first.
19:07Otolaryngology, ophthalmology,
19:08general surgery.
19:14This is where medicine became true art.
19:17When Joel Peter Witkin.
19:19Wanted to establish a book on the
19:22human body and came to my collection
19:26after conferring with the Washington,
19:28DC experts that I had the pictures,
19:32I had the originals.
19:33And actually that's a picture of Joel
19:35and I I'll just tell you a quick story
19:37about that head in his soup plate,
19:38which you'll see the original later.
19:40Joel wanted to do a picture of
19:42the head and the soup plate that
19:44I had was taken in Columbus,
19:46OH, but he couldn't get ahead.
19:48He couldn't get ahead in America.
19:49We went to Mexico.
19:50He couldn't get ahead in Mexico,
19:52but he could get a body.
19:54So he got a body,
19:55drilled a hole in the table,
19:57drilled a hole in the soup
19:59plate and put the head.
20:01And the soup plate.
20:02And this was at an exhibition November 22.
20:07This was really another transition point.
20:10Medical medicine and photography in
20:12the history of photography magazine.
20:14This is the academic magazine in
20:18photographic history and it's about
20:22Joel and I and human body parts.
20:25Now I wasn't only writing my own journal.
20:28Other people came to me from various
20:32magazines and I was writing at the same time.
20:36About 10 journals a month of here you
20:38see the Journal of Otolaryngology.
20:41Just some of the covers,
20:42all of these magazines.
20:44Here I had multiple regular journal
20:46articles with different medical
20:48photographs and I wrote all the
20:51articles I did have some people do
20:54the editing because I am dyslexic.
20:57Oh, the one other thing I should
20:59tell you is where I get my usual
21:01ability with photography from.
21:02I have an A museum I cannot remember.
21:06Words to songs.
21:09So when my daughter has 10,000 songs
21:11in her head and can sing them,
21:13I can only do the first line of three songs.
21:16The rest of my head is filled with
21:18these photographs and that's why
21:20I can put into context history.
21:22Angiography.
21:25Of course, by 1990 came around,
21:27we started working with Ken Burns
21:29with civil war material and this
21:32is just an unusual album that
21:34was kept at here with hospital.
21:36Showing some of the photographs,
21:38we also redid it in 2012 with
21:40the Republic of suffering,
21:41when they upped the number
21:43of people killed in the civil
21:45war from 750,000 to 850,000.
21:52Europe was a favorite playground
21:54for medical photography,
21:55and here's an exhibition we
21:57had at Velvet in Switzerland.
22:01And that's where.
22:02Was a great experience.
22:04I also covered other fields.
22:06So in 1990 I did.
22:07The American dentist and I have a large
22:09collection of early dental photography.
22:11If you go outside,
22:12you'll see one of those dental photographs,
22:14and I think it appeared in this book.
22:17The face of mercy was a book.
22:19I think Cheryl knew and did the text.
22:21I did the photographic history
22:23and it's just medicine at war.
22:26I have photographic pictures
22:28of physicians at war since
22:30the Crimean War in 1856.
22:35This was the breakthrough book of
22:38my Career in memorial photography,
22:40as you can see, made the front page
22:43of the New York Times Book Review and
22:46since 1990 we have had a minimum of 1
22:50exhibition a year on memorial photography.
22:54I just. And this was they had hired
22:57John Updike to write about the book.
22:59This was, of course,
23:00a year later in American heritage,
23:02and I think it was John Snow,
23:03who was the editor, wrote an article about
23:06my contribution to American culture.
23:08With reintroducing.
23:11Memorial photography I worked several
23:15years on creating this documentary.
23:18Sorry, but the bottom is missing.
23:19It should say death in America.
23:22I'll get to my IT people later.
23:26But I went to awards and this
23:29film was used in high schools
23:32and colleges for about a decade.
23:35These are just some articles in magazines
23:38that I had worked on this special issue.
23:42The new image in the nude image in medical
23:44photography is a particularly hot topic.
23:46I mean, if you look through
23:48the history of photography,
23:49you see in the 1840s, eighteen 70s,
23:51it was a whole body's picture.
23:53It was a holistic view.
23:54I, as I lectured on you,
23:56saw the entire person naked even though they
23:59had a lesion in the head or or fully dressed.
24:03And so.
24:05And I want to also want to remind
24:08everyone I was a ophthalmologist.
24:10I practice a good eight hour day,
24:12six days a week.
24:13I didn't have to sleep.
24:14That's why all this work got done.
24:17And I took out a picture of what I did,
24:19emergency work,
24:20the US Coast Guard back in the 60s.
24:22So I always loved emergencies
24:24because I lived where I worked.
24:27I had no clock so I could see
24:29patients at 2:00 in the morning.
24:31I got to see a lot of actors,
24:34actresses, hip hop stars.
24:35You know who would call me at all
24:37hours of the day, at all weekends.
24:39My kids will tell you that.
24:41But I wrote every day,
24:42usually between 11:00 PM
24:44and 3:00 AM or 4:00 AM.
24:49Here is a photograph teaching
24:52medical humanities at the archive.
24:54So we've had students from NYU,
24:56others medical schools and colleges
24:59come to the archive where we do focused.
25:02Discussions.
25:04Now, as was mentioned during the
25:061990s when they did this sort of thing,
25:09my photograph collection.
25:11Historic photograph collection was
25:12rated best in the United States.
25:15Not art photography.
25:16Don't ask me about a famous photographer.
25:19If you could find the photograph
25:20somewhere else, I don't want it.
25:22I only need photographs and use photographs
25:25that are unavailable in other institutions.
25:28Almost everyone else on the list,
25:30it was a billionaire.
25:32By 1995 it was historic
25:34photography and Judaica,
25:35because I continued to collect
25:38photography in the Judaica field.
25:41Some people say this is my greatest
25:44contribution to the history of art.
25:45William Rubin, director,
25:47curator of modern art at the
25:50New York Museum of Modern Art,
25:52came to me and said that Picasso did
25:55not get his ideas from African masks.
25:58Picasso got his ideas from the destruction of
26:01faces he had seen in the lazaretto in Paris,
26:05in Spain.
26:08And so we did this book the damage.
26:10Elzey Ave.
26:11And it's just an interesting aspect
26:13because a lot of people didn't believe it.
26:16And when William Rubin used to ask Picasso.
26:19Did your ideas come from syphilitic
26:22patients or African mask?
26:24He said.
26:26Would you rather have it something
26:28like from diseased women or
26:31from the tradition of art?
26:33Anyway,
26:33there is my one attachment to Picasso
26:35with a picture of French orange
26:38Jello who bore his two children.
26:40She's still alive and well
26:41and living in New York.
26:46Mornings work came out in 1998.
26:49There was another of my
26:51noted medical books, crime.
26:53My greatest areas of collecting
26:56are medical photography,
26:58crime photography, Judaic photography,
27:01African-American photography,
27:02and of course, medical photography.
27:05So these are my books on crime and forensics.
27:10Just some of my lectures at various places.
27:13My what everyone says was my favorite
27:16lectures at time is the maladies.
27:18They made the creation of female genital
27:21disease by physicians and that was
27:24given to OB GYN incoming residents.
27:31This is Sleeping Beauty too.
27:32What about great exhibitions
27:34because it was at the Musee Dorsay.
27:36One Side Story I think I have time for.
27:39They have their major exhibitions
27:41in the afternoon, the reason why
27:42they invited all the other curators,
27:44and when I asked the head of of cultural.
27:49There is in in France and he said,
27:50well, if we happen in the evening,
27:52then it's on their time.
27:54If we have it in the afternoon,
27:56it's on the government's time.
27:57So it was a great exhibit.
27:59These are some of the exhibits
28:02which I participated in and
28:04created sleeping beauties,
28:05memorial photography, the dental exhibit,
28:08war photography and deadly
28:09medicine was about the Nazis.
28:11In 2003 I began my 4 volume series
28:15of medical texts and here they are.
28:18This is. Respiratory disease oncology.
28:22With every one of these texts
28:25there was always an exhibition.
28:28Dermatology.
28:31Patients in promise,
28:32which was an Eli Lilly company.
28:34It was very difficult to get the the legal.
28:38Over to be able to produce a book like this,
28:41but a lot of fun nephrology for Roche.
28:44And one of the things I don't have
28:46here in 1986 I created a movie for
28:49Roche called Prelude to anesthesia.
28:53Ophthalmology text.
28:56This was a series of
28:57articles I wrote for scope,
28:58which was an Irish surgical journal
29:00based on my Irish surgical photographs.
29:03And as you can see those pictures
29:06on the upper part on the right,
29:09very interesting pictures of patients.
29:12Totally dressed with their disease.
29:14Now I just had to show you I
29:15created several pages of this.
29:16I removed it because it's literally boring.
29:19Several pages of the journals
29:21that I had done. Again,
29:23this was the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
29:26This was Mercy St.
29:28we went to our civil war material
29:30and of course I did the nick.
29:32I want you all to see the nick.
29:34And then you'll see what
29:36medical history was was like,
29:38I don't know if I could hit that list,
29:40but I'll just go on.
29:41This was the nick where I was on set.
29:44These are some of the films I did.
29:47The city of Bologna invited US and
29:49I gave a lecture at the Ignazio,
29:52which was the original amphitheater
29:55in Bologna.
29:56Another medical book, my last one, 2017.
30:01Was on mentioned.
30:02Now all of these pictures are at Yale.
30:05And this was our our book
30:07Stiff skulls and skeletons.
30:09I would only like to say is most people
30:13know me as a history of medicine person.
30:15They know me for my
30:17giving my collection here.
30:19But some of my friends said I would
30:21be best be known by 1,000,000 as
30:24a gastroenterologist because I
30:27did the colonoscopy on Anthony
30:30Fat Tony Salerno in the Irishman.
30:34And these are the people that helped me.
30:37Thank you. I'm available for questions later.
30:43Thank you. Thank you.
30:47These are just like these are just my
30:49future books that we're working on.
31:31Hi everyone. Um, so?
31:33As I mentioned in the introduction,
31:37I am a historian and a former
31:39curator of photography.
31:45Umm. With a special interest in early
31:49photography and its intersections
31:51with the history of science.
31:52I'm not a specialist in medical photography,
31:56but for many years I have found it
31:58extremely fruitful and generative
31:59to teach with medical photographs,
32:01primarily in the medical history
32:03library here, mostly depending upon the
32:06incredible expertise of Melissa graph,
32:09and recently with objects in the Burns
32:11collection after they arrived there.
32:13And so I've been teaching
32:15with medical photographs for.
32:16Seven or eight years now?
32:19To undergraduate and graduate students at
32:20Yale in History of Science and Medicine,
32:23but also to students from across the
32:24humanities and social sciences and a
32:26couple of medical students who found
32:28their way to my classes as well.
32:29So I wanted to follow on from Stanley's
32:31presentation by reflecting a little
32:33bit with all of you on what it can
32:35mean to think historically and
32:37humanistically about medical photography.
32:39Drawing on my experience working with
32:41these kinds of objects in my teaching,
32:44and drawing on some of the insights
32:46from recent approaches to the
32:48interdisciplinary history of photography.
32:49So now bring my lunch back up.
32:53So these two photographs were taken
32:55just a few years apart from one another,
32:58and they offer two very different
33:01ways of seeing, knowing,
33:03feeling the presence of pathogens,
33:06and grappling with death or its possibility.
33:09So on the one hand, on the left.
33:10Wait, my left? Yeah, everyone's left.
33:15You have a microscopic view of the
33:17blood of a yellow fever victim,
33:19enhanced, as you'll notice by careful
33:21systematic record keeping right?
33:23So you can see the pencil inscriptions or
33:25ink actually inscription indicating the time
33:27passed and the progression of the disease,
33:30the patient case number, and more.
33:32The other on the right,
33:33instead of portrait of a child with smallpox,
33:35their face visible through intense scarring,
33:37their head gently cradled by someone,
33:40perhaps a caregiver.
33:42Where the annotations on the first
33:44tell us really clearly that this
33:45blood sample is from a fatal case,
33:47and the 2nd we have few visual cues
33:49to tell us for sure whether this
33:51young patient is alive or dead.
33:53Whereas the first,
33:53the one on the left,
33:55invites us to see yellow fever as
33:57a virus and microscopic threat,
33:59an impersonal battle occurring
34:00beyond the threshold of visibility,
34:03the second one tugs at our hearts with
34:05its moving portrait of a suffering child.
34:06It invites empathy and sorrow,
34:09and it suggests the possibility of care.
34:12So in my research and my teaching,
34:14I've I've learned to think about
34:16photography as a family of practices
34:18and techniques that have really been
34:19woven into the fabric of knowledge
34:21making and knowledge circulation
34:23in the sciences and in medicine.
34:25And there's so much heterogeneity
34:27across those fields.
34:28Within medicine specifically,
34:30there's different ways of observing and
34:32describing and knowing and engaging body,
34:34different ways of communicating
34:36and acting on that knowledge.
34:39It has never been one way of
34:41seeing across medical practice,
34:42and there's no photograph that
34:44commands a single reading simply
34:46by virtue of being medical or
34:48being about medicine in some way.
34:50The medical photograph has always
34:52been a contingent historical category
34:54of a fuzzy and indistinct one,
34:56and no medical photograph is
34:58just a medical photograph.
34:59So many of the photographs in the exhibition
35:01today are many other kinds of image as well,
35:03right?
35:03Like some of them might be
35:05memorial objects or souvenirs,
35:06presentations of the self press photographs.
35:09They might invoke or undermine ideas
35:11about gender or racial difference,
35:13about disability and health,
35:14about what it means to be human.
35:17And more.
35:17And so I see the burns collection,
35:20with its rich documentation
35:21of medical practice,
35:22medical pedagogy,
35:23and historical ways of seeing and
35:25experiencing the body through change,
35:27injury and disease.
35:28I see it as this remarkable opportunity
35:30to think not just about medicine,
35:32but to explore it,
35:34to to explore and probe the interfaces
35:36between medicine and other kinds
35:38of social and cultural experience.
35:41And so.
35:44I think looking at photographs from
35:46the 19th and early 20th century,
35:47such as the ones in this exhibition,
35:49are also an opportunity to to try and
35:52acknowledge and then think across the
35:54Gulf that lies between our experiences
35:56of these images now in the 21st century,
35:59and how viewers and users and
36:01medical practitioners would have
36:03engaged with them in the past.
36:05And so I don't simply mean like,
36:06how would you know,
36:07past people have looked at these photographs.
36:10What would they see in them?
36:10I want to kind of push beyond the image,
36:13beyond the picture itself.
36:15How would they experience them?
36:18What you and I see when we look at
36:20pictures like these is radically different
36:22from those past historical experiences.
36:24So we all know, right?
36:25Like each of you is probably
36:26carrying like 2 cameras with you
36:28right now in some device or other.
36:29It's such a photography.
36:30It's such a part of the fabric of
36:33our everyday visual experience.
36:34We're intensely familiar with photography
36:36as a technology for making pictures,
36:38and we're accustomed to seeing
36:40photographic images reproduced in
36:42a variety of formats and media.
36:44We live in the confidence that
36:46we can almost literally pull out
36:47any image anywhere on the screen.
36:49Whatever device is closest to hand.
36:51Sometimes we consume photographs
36:53without even thinking about the fact
36:54that we're looking at photographs.
36:56We kind of we think that we're looking
36:57through them at something that's
36:59something that we're seeing directly,
37:00this original thing.
37:02In those moments,
37:03we see the photograph as a almost
37:05like a transparent window,
37:06a window on a historical moment,
37:08or on someone's past experience,
37:10a fleeting moment that was somehow captured
37:13by photography before it vanished forever.
37:15So these are some of the unspoken
37:17assumptions that I think many of
37:19us might bring instinctively to
37:20looking at an exhibition like the one
37:22that we're kind of marking today.
37:24And there are historical reasons
37:26for how this came to be,
37:27how people, not not everyone,
37:29not all the time,
37:30but how many people came to look at
37:32photographs as something to look through.
37:33But today,
37:34with all of these incredible 19th century
37:37images on view just outside these doors,
37:39I want to remind you that this was not
37:41at all true of 19th century viewers.
37:45The people who made and used
37:46and participated in most of the
37:48photographs in this exhibition.
37:49When they looked at a photograph
37:51of a person of a scene of a
37:54microscopic view of a virus,
37:56they were intensely aware that
37:57they were looking at a photograph
37:59at a thing called a photograph.
38:01They engage with photographs,
38:02not just his images,
38:03but as three-dimensional material objects.
38:07They experience them as things with volume,
38:09with weight, with opacity,
38:11with tactility, fragility,
38:12a kind of the kind of physical
38:15presence in the world.
38:16And those things mattered for what
38:18the photograph meant to them.
38:22This awareness of the materiality
38:24of of early photographs is it's
38:26unavoidable when you when you
38:28encounter objects like this
38:30daguerreotype which is on view outside.
38:33I think we've seen it on screen
38:34a couple of minutes ago before.
38:35This is a postmortem photograph
38:37of physician who who died of
38:39cholera in Saint Louis in 1849.
38:43I'm assuming that not everyone
38:44here is a photo historian,
38:46so I'm also just going to briefly
38:47describe what a daguerreotype is,
38:48in case that might be helpful in thinking
38:50about the materiality of this object.
38:52Right. So at daycare type is a photograph
38:55of physical photograph on a copper plate.
38:57So it's a piece of metal covered with a
38:59layer of finely polished silver in which
39:01the image is suspended simultaneously,
39:04a negative and a positive image.
39:08So to really see the portrait of
39:09this man in death, the image has
39:11to be maneuvered at an angle.
39:14So that you're you're kind of your
39:15eye and your hand and the object
39:17have to work together as one to get
39:18to the place where you can see it.
39:20Now it's been masterfully displayed
39:21out there with like very careful and
39:24precise lighting and I know how hard
39:26it is kind of curatorial to make that
39:27happen so that you can look at it and
39:29see it as an image that's easy to see
39:31but that's not really what they're like.
39:33In fact the you know
39:34there's they're so fragile,
39:35they're so gem like and you have
39:38to hold them to to understand them
39:40and to feel what they're about.
39:42The surface of these objects
39:44is so fragile and vulnerable,
39:45not just to the touch from our fingers,
39:47but to the very air around them,
39:49which is why so many daguerreotypes
39:51were housed and housed in cases
39:53like like this one.
39:54So the kind of leather case,
39:55the think it's velvet lining.
39:58So you've got these these tiny
40:00little photographs with they're
40:01flickering reflective surfaces.
40:03They're crisp and intricate detail,
40:05their uniqueness,
40:05they're unreproducible ability
40:06because you can only,
40:08you can't make multiples from it,
40:09you can just rephotograph it.
40:12And their packaging in these tiny cases,
40:14all of these features make them into this,
40:17this kind of treasure like object, right?
40:19And in fact,
40:20most dangerous type portraits were
40:21treated like gems and keepsakes,
40:23not like pictures that you'd hang on
40:25the wall or that you'd print in a book.
40:27These are,
40:28you know,
40:29these are objects that are bearers
40:30of memory and love.
40:31And this is expressed really beautifully
40:33in the newspaper obituary that someone
40:36who cared very much about this person
40:38carefully preserved inside the case,
40:40facing the image.
40:43And there are many objects in this
40:45exhibition that likewise call our attention
40:48to the physicality of photographs,
40:50to their the way that their physical
40:53format shaped their meaning.
40:54Using a medical photograph often involved
40:57some sort of embodied relationship to it.
41:00Um,
41:00and medical photographs can also
41:02be a portal through which we can
41:04consider physical and embodied
41:06aspects of material practice itself.
41:08So this example from Howard Kelly's
41:111911 stereo clinic used pairs
41:13of stereoscopic images combined
41:15with an optical viewing device to
41:18create an immersive 3D experience
41:20of surgery for the user,
41:22presumably a surgeon or a surgical student.
41:26So seeing these images, so you know you,
41:29you place the card in the holder,
41:31you look through the device
41:32you have to have your eye at,
41:33you know,
41:33in the right position.
41:34You've got to be able to focus and
41:36unfocus your eyes in just the right way.
41:37You might get a headache.
41:38It causes quite a lot of eye strain,
41:40like these things demand a lot
41:42of your body and especially
41:44of your eyes and your mind.
41:46They they produce mental fatigue
41:47as well as physical fatigue.
41:48In my at least in my experience now
41:50I'm just being autobiographical.
41:54And they require the user to be constantly
41:56aware of their own position in relation to
41:59the instrument and in relation to the image.
42:01But for all of that kind of physical effort.
42:04They allowed the user to have this
42:06experience of stopping time in the
42:08crucial moment of a surgical procedure,
42:10and then closely at leisure along time,
42:13examine like that most crucial moment,
42:16and to do so far away from the hurried
42:18and chaotic space of the operating room
42:20and the many obstacles to visibility
42:23and understanding that might be there.
42:25So this pedagogical set of stereo images.
42:30Speaks to us about how visual technology
42:33was mobilized to reform medical
42:35education in early 20th century.
42:37And it kind of tells us a little bit
42:39about what what the vision of medical
42:42teaching was right that you needed to be
42:45able to look long and slow and observe
42:48lots of detail in ways that the surgical
42:51theater might not necessarily allow.
42:53So these photographs are images, sure,
42:55but they're also physical objects that
42:57exist in social and cultural experience,
43:00in physical experience,
43:01material kind of embodied experience.
43:03And one of the things I find exciting
43:05about this exhibition is the opportunity
43:07to experience this and reflect upon it.
43:09Unfortunately,
43:09you can't put your eyes up to the viewer in
43:12the exhibition and have that 3D experience,
43:14but you can kind of, you know,
43:16see what the viewer looks like,
43:17imagine holding it in your hand.
43:21Umm.
43:26There's a truism about photography that it
43:29faithfully records everything that we see.
43:32And that's. That's a statement about
43:34photography that was made more or
43:36less from the moment the medium was
43:37invented in the early 19th century.
43:39But paired with that is another truism that
43:41came almost immediately right afterward,
43:44which is that photography allows
43:45us to supersede vision,
43:47to go beyond the limits of human perception,
43:49to bring other things into view
43:51that we couldn't see before.
43:52And medical photographs are a really
43:55interesting genre for exploring this
43:57tension between different models of how to
44:00know through seeing different epistemic
44:02values for photography in medicine,
44:04because of the profound aesthetic
44:06and ethical issues that arise
44:08from these two possibilities.
44:10So some of the images in the exhibition
44:12invite us to see medical observation
44:14as focused on the visible recording and
44:17rich and precise detail the exterior
44:19presentation of some interior condition,
44:21so on the skin or in the posture.
44:25While others,
44:26such as X-ray images on the left suggest
44:28the importance of going beyond the surface,
44:31so seeing through the soft tissues
44:33of the body into the conditions of
44:36those invisible interior structures.
44:38Or if we go back.
44:40To the microscopic views of blood during a
44:43case of yellow fever that I started with.
44:47Some images might insist on the
44:48importance of a different kind
44:50of observation that is serial,
44:51so it happens over time,
44:52through a sequence of images,
44:55through a kind of sequence of moments
44:57and kind of piercing together.
44:58That temporal development of something is
45:01a key aspect of expert medical observation.
45:05In images like these and so I
45:06don't know if you can read in the
45:09inscription like the first one says.
45:11On the right hand side of the
45:12inscription it says first day and
45:13in this one it says fifth day.
45:19So I said earlier the aesthetics and
45:21ethics of these medical portraits and
45:22these are related to each other and it's
45:24worth reflecting on them a little bit.
45:26And by the way, I'm I'm calling
45:28these portraits and you might think
45:29that that's the wrong word for
45:31the images that I'm showing here.
45:32But going back to what I said earlier
45:34about the importance of material
45:36form to photographic meaning,
45:37I just want to point out that these
45:41photographs are printed or sorry are pasted
45:44onto cardboard mount called a cabinet.
45:46Card, which is a format for presenting
45:48photographs that was primarily used for
45:50the exchange and circulation of portraits,
45:52and there are actually many examples of it
45:54out on view in some of the patient portraits.
45:58Right now. So we can consider
46:01the way that even specialized
46:03medical photography has drawn on,
46:04but also diverged from the visual conventions
46:08of the 19th century bourgeois portrait.
46:11We can attend to the issues that they
46:14raise around privacy and voyeurism,
46:16given the intimacy of access
46:18to so many bodies that we are
46:20offered on screen here today,
46:22outside in the exhibition and
46:23in the collection as a whole.
46:26Through all of these images,
46:27but usually often most often without
46:30any clear indication of patient consent.
46:34We can attend to the ways that these
46:36images might be seen to dehumanize or
46:38objectify or reduce people to body parts,
46:40but they also might be seen to
46:42to affirm the humanity and the
46:44individuality of their subjects.
46:51These images also, I think,
46:52raise important questions about power,
46:55representation and the photographic
46:56encounter in the clinic or the studio.
46:59So every photograph in the Burns collection,
47:02no matter how seemingly kind of
47:04impersonal and kind of expertly medical,
47:07is in some way a trace of a social encounter.
47:10And it's important not to forget.
47:12That we can imagine outward,
47:14beyond what is directly visible in
47:16the image to things and people and
47:19interactions that we know must have been
47:21there for that photograph to exist at all.
47:23Such as the presence of a
47:25photographer in the room.
47:27Sometimes this may have been a physician,
47:28or a lab technician,
47:30or some other person associated
47:31with the medical setting.
47:33But more often than not it was
47:35a professional photographer who
47:36had learned to adapt their studio
47:38portraiture skills for a new client.
47:39And of course, the client is the
47:41medical institution or physician,
47:42not the patient.
47:46We can also think outwards toward the
47:48setting in which the photograph was taken,
47:50which sometimes may have been
47:51in the clinic or the hospital,
47:53or in a makeshift studio
47:54attached to the clinic,
47:55or in an operating theater where
47:57lines of sight and privileged
47:58positions of maximal visibility
48:00were carefully controlled.
48:05Had some intentions that I changed
48:06my mind about this afternoon.
48:09So in whatever physical and
48:12cultural space of encounter
48:13medical photographs were made,
48:16we can be sure that complex relationships
48:18were unfolding in that space,
48:20relations of power and agency,
48:22of exploitation and profit,
48:24but also of care and healing.
48:27Medical photographs are
48:28always an opportunity,
48:29not just for close looking at the image,
48:31but for refocusing beyond the image
48:33on the social and material practices
48:35through which they were made.
48:37Thank you.
48:54So I recognize we have a few
48:56minutes left for questions.
48:58My plan was to ask maybe one
49:00question of both Chitra and Stanley.
49:03I'll just because that's who I call you,
49:04what I call you and then to go from there.
49:08But I wanted to also make sure
49:10that we had opportunity for,
49:11for our audience to ask questions.
49:14Does anyone have a question
49:15that they'd like to ask?
49:18OK. I think Karen are we have the microphone?
49:22And right behind you then, because
49:23you have individuals right behind.
49:27Doctor Burns, do you digitize your
49:29photographs prior to publication,
49:31or are you working with analog
49:33versions that are photographed?
49:36Come up here, yeah, please.
49:38OK.
49:44That's the only time we digitize
49:46them is before publication.
49:50Otherwise it's way too much work and
49:51we don't know what someone wants.
49:53You know someone will make a request.
49:55You I want to picture of a sailor
49:57and World War One or World War 2.
49:59Excuse me, wearing sneakers which I did find.
50:02So usually photographic requests are
50:04very specific and they're not digitized.
50:07That's why I'm happy they're here.
50:10And for our colleagues on Zoom,
50:12please feel free to put your
50:13questions in the chat. Thank you.
50:14We'll take another question
50:15from the audience. Deborah.
50:19Thank you. Thank you both
50:21for this great evening.
50:23Doctor Burns, I've had the pleasure
50:25to work with your collections and I'm
50:28really appreciative that they're here.
50:30I wanted to ask you a little bit about
50:33where you got some of these images,
50:35you know, where do you,
50:36where do you find them and
50:37how do you acquire them?
50:40I removed that part of my lecture.
50:41I had several slides showing you the
50:45ever Brimfield antique shows auctions.
50:49Around the world,
50:49I showed you a picture of Pete Boxton.
50:51Pete Boxing was my point man.
50:53He lived in California.
50:54And so he was the man who got
50:57me calling up another slot.
51:01Photographs as you just saw,
51:03which is the best form of
51:04provenance you could ever get,
51:06and so I did take often pictures
51:09of myself getting the photographs.
51:11Was
51:12wise to think ahead. Thank you.
51:19We have another question.
51:20Let me ask a question actually
51:23for both Chitra and Stanley.
51:24How does Middlefield medical
51:26photography help you reflect on
51:28your own research or clinical work?
51:33That's a that's a bigger question,
51:35but yeah, I'd love to hear you.
51:38Ophthalmologists are.
51:41Focused on detail.
51:43And so photography is an important
51:45part of ophthalmology as it is
51:48in radiology and in dermatology.
51:50So and and sharing information.
51:54When you have unusual cases.
52:01Yeah. So I mentioned earlier that whoops,
52:02that medical photography wasn't it wasn't
52:05and isn't my kind of research specialty.
52:08And so I I was trained in history
52:10of science focusing on the history
52:12of the physical sciences and and and
52:15came to photography thinking about.
52:17The kind of intersection of photography and
52:21and physics and astronomy and chemistry.
52:24And I think that when I started
52:26kind of broadening out from my kind
52:29of narrow research topic,
52:30the kind of thing that you are supposed
52:32to do as a graduate student and try to
52:34think more broadly about the place of
52:36photography in kind of like broader
52:38fields of knowledge about the natural
52:41and the human world and body. Kind of.
52:45It really helped me understand.
52:49I guess a key element of kind,
52:51because there's often a kind of
52:53triumphalist story about photography that,
52:54you know, before we couldn't see in
52:56this way or we couldn't capture the
52:57sort of image and then a certain kind
52:59of technical advance was made and
53:00then we were finally able to do it.
53:02And what I what I've come to understand
53:05through research and history of science
53:06and history of medicine on photography
53:08is how kind of contingent to the
53:10specific subcultures of knowledge
53:11the take up of photography is.
53:13So Stanley mentioned kind of the
53:15need to kind of observe and record
53:17intense detail as being a key.
53:19Kind of use for photography in his practice.
53:22And I think that's something that we see
53:24from the history of medical photography
53:25that in you know depending on whether
53:27your clinical practice is about observing,
53:29observing minute detail or
53:32tracking change over time,
53:34certain aspects of the medium and the things
53:36that it allows become useful to you are not.
53:39And so the kind of uneven take up in
53:41different kind of fields of medicine
53:43and in different fields of science
53:45I think really comes down to that.
53:47Yeah.
53:50Oh, we have another question,
53:51another question. Thanks.
53:56OK. Let's go ahead. So umm.
54:05From one.
54:09I'm not sure this is particularly
54:11a question, but I'll.
54:12I'll give it to Doctor Burns's
54:15photographs in your waiting room.
54:17Doctor burns.
54:21And just mentioning that you would.
54:28You know, you know, you were often
54:31responding to medical emergencies 24/7,
54:33so these photographs patients would come
54:34in and see the photographs as they came
54:36into the waiting room, correct? Yes.
54:40The photograph that we all talk about was
54:43I had a picture of because my waiting
54:45room had a wide variety of photographs.
54:48They were or they weren't all medical.
54:51They were the history of photography.
54:53One of the pictures I had
54:56was taken on August 26th,
54:581944 when the Americans came into Paris,
55:02or maybe in the 25th, sorry.
55:04And it was a picture of the tanks rolling
55:07into plastic concord Nazi snipers had
55:09hidden away and they were shooting.
55:12At the people and one of my patients
55:16got hysterical about it because
55:18he was in the mob.
55:20That they were shooting at and he had never,
55:23of course, seen the picture.
55:24And you never know when you're out in the
55:27public when the picture is being taken.
55:29And here you know he had seen this
55:31picture and he couldn't identify himself,
55:34but he knew some of the other people
55:36that he was standing near in the
55:38mob in Paris in August of 1944.
55:42So I kept my patients in
55:43line. That's what that says, too.
55:47Absolutely. Uh, I think I just
55:49want to ask one final question.
55:52I think for you, Stanley,
55:52actually, as a medical doctor,
55:54what advice would you give to individuals
55:56who are interested in developing
55:58their own collections of materials,
55:59whether it be photographs, books,
56:01or their own personal archives?
56:05There's only one bit of advice,
56:07and very few people take it.
56:10And that is you have to
56:12label your photographs.
56:13You have to say who's in
56:15it and when it was taken.
56:17I have had my career documented since
56:20the 1960s when I was in medical school.
56:22I was a photographic editor
56:24of for our class in journal.
56:27But all my photographs had documented
56:29and so that would that's really a big
56:32deal because the chronology of where,
56:35when, how. Is very,
56:37very important.
56:39And standard. There's one last question.
56:42So it says in the chat, when would
56:45doctor Burns place the end of medical
56:47photography as a collectible product?
56:51I guess yesterday.
56:55I wish the medical school in 1960.
56:58That was sixty years ago.
57:00We don't know in the future of what's
57:02important and what's not important.
57:04Like those great doctors taking
57:06the pictures themselves,
57:07X raying having a picture taken,
57:09X-ray and that kidney.
57:12If you look at it,
57:12you never know also how your
57:14photograph is going to be interpreted.
57:16I'm doing work now on my Holocaust
57:19collection and I have over 100
57:21Nazi soldier private albums.
57:23They were so proud of their work,
57:25but the work is now evidence against them.
57:30Well, then I think I'm going to
57:32wrap up our section here again.
57:34I mean, leave it on that note.
57:35I mean, come on. Anyway,
57:38thank you all for joining us.
57:40Thank you Chitra Stanley for the
57:42wonderful presentations and conversation.
57:44If you have any further questions,
57:45you're welcome to to
57:47speak with us afterwards.
57:48And thank you all for joining us.
57:54Thank you to our zoom crowd too.