Popular culture tends to think of ultrasound imagery as objective, immutable, authoritative when, in fact, it’s but one stage in a long historical process of ‘embryo visualization’, as scrupulously documented in the current Making Visible Embryos exhibition:
Developing embryos were first drawn in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Modern medicine and biology exploited technical innovations as pictures and models communicated new attitudes to childbirth, evolution and reproduction. In the twentieth century they became the dominant representations of pregnancy and prominent symbols of hope and fear. Wherever we stand in today’s debates, it should enrich and may challenge our understandings to explore how these icons have been made.
Eight sections are arranged in roughly chronological order. Each focuses on an era and an issue. By contextualizing images that have become iconic or were especially widely distributed in their own time, the exhibition aims to illuminate key questions and concerns. By depicting imaging technologies and people engaged in image production, it emphasizes the work of making visible embryos. (via, April 13th)
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