Title: Picturing the Institution of Social Death: Visual Rhetorics of Postwar Asylum Exposé Photography
Abstract: This paper examines how photography shaped the American public’s perception of psychiatric hospitals during the immediate post-WWII period. I will analyze photographs that appeared in popular exposé articles of that period and that used photography as a visual aid for disclosing the poor conditions of state hospitals, intending to promote reform efforts focused on turning antiquated asylums into modern hospitals. Existing scholarship has mentioned how these photographs had a significant influence on shaping the public’s view of asylum conditions. Through a close examination of these photographs, I will argue that they often contained unintentional messages which stigmatized disabled people.
Bio: Shuko Tamao is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Museum of American History. She was also a postdoctoral research fellow during the 2020-2021 year at the University at Buffalo Center for Disability Studies. Her research areas are in 20th century American history and disability, with a focus on first-person experiences of institutionalization and memories associated with them. She is currently working on a manuscript project titled “Resisting Anonymity through Remembrance: A Narrative Examination of Postwar State Hospital Experiences” which uses material objects, oral testimony, visual culture, and other non-textual sources to recreate first-person narratives. With a background in public history, she is also co-writing an essay with Aaron Rubinstein about a range of issues specific to disability-related archival collections that prevent the voices of disabled people from being truly accessible to the public. This essay will be published in the collection “Cripping the Archive: Disability, History, and Power,” edited by Jenifer Barclay and Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy.
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