Midget, feeble-minded, crippled, lame, and insane: these terms and the historical photographs that accompany them may seem shocking to present-day audiences.
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.
About the Author: Bogdan resides in Orwell, VT.
Picturing Disability takes the reader beyond judging images as positive or slanderous to reveal how particular contexts generate specific emotions and lasting depictions.
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.
In analyzing the visual Rhetoric of these photographs, Bogdan identifies the wide variety of genres, from sideshow souvenirs to clinical photographs.
He examines the historic and cultural environment of the photographs to decipher the relationship between the images and the perspectives of the picture makers.
Rather than focus on the subjects, Bogdan turns his gaze on the people behind the camera.
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.
They were found on begging cards and in family albums.
The photos were used as promotional material for circus sideshows, charity drives, and art galleries.
A young woman with no arms wears a sequined tutu and smiles for the camera as she smokes a cigarette with her toes; a man holds up two prosthetic legs while his own legs are bared to the knees to show his missing feet.
Midget, feeble-minded, crippled, lame, and insane: these terms and the historical photographs that accompany them may seem shocking to present-day audiences
