Representations of the Extraordinary Human Body: Making Sense of the Nuttall Collection of Lantern Slides

Ine van Dooren, S. Dellmann

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Taking the slide collection of medical expert professor G.H.F. Nuttall as a starting point, this article investigates the
representations of the extraordinary human body in West-Europe lantern history and lantern heritage between 1880
and 1930. To explain the at first sight unfamiliar image repertoire of this collection, the authors place the object, the
medium and the aesthetical representations in a historical and cultural frame and compare the material on two levels.
Firstly, the authors apply a cross-media visual analysis to describe several modes in which the extraordinary body is
represented (cartes de visite, early cinema) and secondly, they trace the appearance of extraordinary bodies in other
genres within the medium of lantern slides.
After these two comparisons the authors provide a contextualized, more nuanced understanding of the archival objects of the G.H.F. Nuttall slide collection and its visual strategies.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)61-79
Number of pages19
JournalFonseca, Journal of Communication
Volume2018
Issue number16
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • lantern slides
  • medical photography
  • G.H.F. Nuttall (1863-1937)
  • collection-based research
  • early cinema

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Representations of the Extraordinary Human Body: Making Sense of the Nuttall Collection of Lantern Slides'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this