The body as an object of medical research

The body as an object of medical research
Research via books

The body has been used for medical research as far back as records show and beyond weather it has been through the medical profession for research and teaching purposes or a person’s own curiosity for self-investigation when diagnosed with illness fighting their own disease, this was done not only through the written word but through painting, drawing then later by photographs this is known to this day as Medical illustration.


Gerhard Lang

Gerhard Lang’s artwork is poeticised science. His research involves investigating cultural processes, e.g. that of perception. How we explain our existence and the world is subjected here to a close examination that is both earnest and playful. In this context, the essential question for Lang is how landscape and man are related. Lang’s specific strategy of analysis employs a wide variety of acoustic and pictorial processes that he incorporates into his work in a per formative and playful manner.



2 composites taken from http://angusbehm.tumblr.com/page/2

In 1992 Gerhard Lang photographed all residents (58) of his home village Schloss-Nauses before superimposing them over each other by means of a particular photographic technique – composite photography. The outcome was The Typical Inhabitant of Schloss-Nauses 1992. Eight years later, Lang repeated the process. The composite from the year 2000 shows how much the typical inhabitant of Schloss-Nauses 1992 had changed within eight years





Jo Spence

Jo Spence is most famous for her self-portraits depicting her journey with breast cancer. Her most notable collection "A Picture of Heath?" features this struggle in which she recorded her treatment and growing dissatisfaction with the NHS and conventional medicines she credits homeopathy for her eventual recovery.
She used phototherapy, photography as a cure for emotional instability during her traditional Chinese cancer treatment. Jo Spence portrayed feelings of having no control over her life and worthlessness through her depression from battling cancer.

The artist eventually died in 1992 from complications arising from leukemia.

Taken from the book “Putting myself in the Picture” by Jo Spence