Seeing Cellular Debris, Remembering a Soviet Method
#MMPMID27152063
Kelly AH
Vis Anthropol
2016[Mar]; 29
(2
): 133-158
PMID27152063
show ga
A 1962 photomicrograph of a mosquito taken in what was then a Tanganyikan
mountain laboratory offers a prompt to consider the social salience and affective
power of scientific images. Drawing inspiration from anthropological work on
photographic practices, this article excavates the diverse geopolitical and
domestic contexts of the image's production, consumption and circulation, so as
to grasp the relationship between scientific labors and lives. As much souvenir
as "epistemic thing," the photomicrograph provides new directions in thinking
about the materiality of memory in tropical medicine.