Journal•ISSN: 1471-4787
Visual Culture in Britain
Taylor & Francis
About: Visual Culture in Britain is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Painting & Visual culture. It has an ISSN identifier of 1471-4787. Over the lifetime, 264 publications have been published receiving 1115 citations.
Topics: Painting, Visual culture, Exhibition, Contemporary art, Queer
Papers published on a yearly basis
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TL;DR: Henry Tonks’ pastel studies of wounded First World War servicemen before, after and during facial surgery are focused on, exploring the hypothesis that the history of surgery – and to some extent thehistory of medical representation – is a history of touch as much as a product of visual practices and conventions.
Abstract: This article focuses on Henry Tonks’ pastel studies of wounded First World War servicemen before, after and during facial surgery. Viewed alongside archival photographs of the same patients from the Cambridge Hospital at Aldershot and the Queen's Hospital (now Queen Mary's Hospital) in Sidcup, Tonks’ drawings disturb the conventions both of medical illustration and portraiture: they are discussed here in relation to the visual cultures of modern medicine (in particular nineteenth- and twentieth-century traditions of medical illustration and photography) and the artist's own thoughts on artistic objectivity and beauty. For Tonks, good drawing was tactile: without this sensibility and skill, he believed, the draughtsman's art was like playing a piano without hearing the notes. In light of Tonks’ wartime collaboration with the surgeon Harold Gillies, this paper explores the hypothesis that the history of surgery – and to some extent the history of medical representation – is a history of touch as much as a p...
29 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the history of fingerprinting in colonial India within a larger system of visual technology used by the British in institutions such as prisons is discussed. And the authors argue for the recognition of a visual culture of fingerprints that was key to the practice's proliferation as a science.
Abstract: The invention of dactylography in the nineteenth century was inextricably linked to the imperial encounter between the British and their colonial subjects in India. Represented as a scientific technology, fingerprinting was used to produce abstract images of Indian bodies that could be placed within an archival system. The semiotic properties of fingerprinting along with the adaptability of a fingerprint as a visual image were critical to the successful operation of the practice. This article situates the history of fingerprinting in colonial India within a larger system of visual technology used by the British in institutions such as prisons. Through a comparison of different nineteenth-century technologies adopted in India, including photography, anthropometry, and fingerprinting, I argue for the recognition of a visual culture of fingerprinting that was key to the practice’s proliferation as a science.
24 citations
TL;DR: The Warburg Institute of the University of London hosted a star-studded and well-attended conference between June 13 and 15, 2016, in what were perhaps the last days of an affirmatively cosmopolitan United Kingdom as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Between June 13 and 15, 2016, in what were perhaps the last days of an affirmatively cosmopolitan United Kingdom, the Warburg Institute of the University of London hosted a star-studded and well-at...
19 citations
TL;DR: This paper investigated the cultural politics of this portrait of the Governor-General of Bengal from 1807 to 1813, as being embedded in and pictorially embodying what have been designated the aesthetics of colonialism.
Abstract: Focusing on George Chinnery’s Gilbert Elliot, 1st Earl of Minto, 1812, this article offers a close reading of one example of large-scale, public portraiture in colonial India and its lifecycle from commission to reproduction as a memorial engraving. It investigates the cultural politics of this portrait of the Governor-General of Bengal from 1807 to 1813, as being embedded in and pictorially embodying what have been designated the aesthetics of colonialism. In so doing, it raises a constellation of issues in and out of visual representation, concerning the relationships between home and colony, formal and domestic portraits, public and private contexts, likeness and unlikeness, proximity and distance, youth and age, and, at its close, colony and metropolis.
18 citations
TL;DR: The ways in which group portraits of surgeons, a genre associated with inscriptions of corporate membership and institutional authority, reflected the complex and at times contradictory status of surgeons during the late Victorian period are considered.
Abstract: In this article I consider the ways in which group portraits of surgeons, a genre associated with inscriptions of corporate membership and institutional authority, reflected the complex and at times contradictory status of surgeons during the late Victorian period. Group portraits from this period offer a diverse range of representations of surgeons - from middle-class professional to hygiene reformer, scientist to cultured gentleman - all of which worked against the popular conception of the surgeon as manual labourer and bloody carpenter. In particular, the emergence during the period of the gentleman artist-surgeon, exemplified by the celebrity surgeon and amateur artist Henry Thompson (1820-1904), signalled a new incarnation of the surgeon and offered an alternative to both the stereotypes of the surgeon as manual labourer and the surgeon or middle-class professional. But there were complexities and contradictions that beset the identity of the gentleman artist-surgeon, and these will be considered with reference to Thompson's own novel, Charley Kingston's Aunt (1885).
16 citations