Tentative traces: an alternative ethics for historical medical photographs?

Historical photographs of patients pose a complex set of ethical concerns, straddling boundaries between public knowledge and confidential medical data. As visual records, they reveal not only clinical symptoms but also personal features that can make this material feel uniquely exposing. The article explores the conceptual limbo that surrounds these images, highlighting the interdisciplinary concerns that surface when considering this material for historical research. It draws on photography theory, heritage studies and bioethics to decipher the effects of historical records with regard to the individual patient, the clinical institution, the viewer and the descendants of those depicted. The article highlights the intimate connection between a person and their photographic likeness that makes understanding these records as disconnected copies of the subjects they depict difficult. While the medium’s indexical relationship with the material world is often cited to conceptually ‘tether’ a person to their likeness, the intimacy experienced with images of this kind exceeds this reading. By approaching the photographic medium from a global perspective in terms of visual repatriation and familial recovery, the article considers the intimate collation of seeing and being beyond a medicolegal frame. Ultimately, the article highlights the need for a more dispersed understanding of personhood and the importance of considering the intimate ties felt between the living and the dead depicted.