Portraits of violence war and the aesthetics of disfigurement

Introduction -- The elusive portrait -- Aversion: a history -- Repairing war's ravages -- Flesh poems -- The afterlife of Henry Lumley -- Conclusion

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Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. Verfasser: Biernoff, Suzannah (VerfasserIn)
Format: UnknownFormat
Sprache:eng
Veröffentlicht: Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 2017
Schriftenreihe:Corporealities Discourses of disability
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Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:Introduction -- The elusive portrait -- Aversion: a history -- Repairing war's ravages -- Flesh poems -- The afterlife of Henry Lumley -- Conclusion
Portraits of Violence explores the image and idea of facial disfigurement in one of its most troubling modern formations, as a symbol and consequence of war. It opens with Nina Berman's iconic photograph Marine Wedding, which provoked a debate about the medical, military, and psychological response to serious combat injuries. While these issues remain urgent, it is equally crucial to interrogate the representation of war and injury. The concepts of valor, heroism, patriotism, and courage assume visible form and do their cultural work when they are personified and embodied. The mutilated or disabled veteran's body can connote the brutalizing, dehumanizing potential of modern combat. Suzannah Biernoff draws on a wide variety of sources mainly from WWI but also contemporary photography and computer games. Each chapter revolves around particular images: Marine Wedding is discussed alongside Stuart Griffiths' portraits of British veterans; Henry Tonks' drawings of WWI facial casualties are compared to the medical photographs in the Gillies Archives; the production of portrait masks for the severely disfigured is approached through the lens of documentary film and photography; and finally the haunting image of one of Tonks's patients reappears in BioShock, a highly successful computer game. The book simultaneously addresses a neglected area in disability studies; puts disfigurement on the agenda for art history and visual studies; and makes a timely and provocative contribution to the literature on the First World War
Beschreibung:Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-205) and index
Beschreibung:viii, 213 Seiten
Illustrationen
24 cm
ISBN:0472130293
0-472-13029-3
9780472130290
978-0-472-13029-0