"Visual Culture, Photography & Medicine: Bodies, Technologies & the Politics of Seeing" - Lecture Series March-June 2026. In the background: Hand with Rings, a print of one of the first x-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923) of the left hand of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig. It was presented to Professor Ludwig Zehnder of the Physik Institut, University of Freiburg, on 1 January 1896.
Lecture series “Visual Culture, Photography and Medicine: Bodies, Technologies and the Politics of Seeing” (11 March-17 June 2026)

Lecture series “Visual Culture, Photography and Medicine: Bodies, Technologies and the Politics of Seeing” (11 March-17 June 2026)

"Visual Culture, Photography & Medicine: Bodies, Technologies & the Politics of Seeing" - Lecture Series March-June 2026. In the background: Hand with Rings, a print of one of the first x-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923) of the left hand of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig. It was presented to Professor Ludwig Zehnder of the Physik Institut, University of Freiburg, on 1 January 1896.
In the background: Hand with Rings, a print of one of the first x-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923) of the left hand of his wife Anna Bertha Ludwig. It was presented to Professor Ludwig Zehnder of the Physik Institut, University of Freiburg, on 1 January 1896.

This summer term, stemming out of a close cooperation between University of Vienna and FOTO ARSENAL WIEN, this lecture series equips MA students with a theoretically grounded, media-literate understanding of how medicine operates as a cultural system of images, spaces, and narratives – and how these shape lived realities in powerful, often invisible ways.

Medicine has never been a purely scientific enterprise. It is deeply embedded in cultural imaginaries, visual regimes, and aesthetic practices: from anatomical atlases, hospital architecture, and early medical photography to contemporary imaging technologies, and artistic engagements with illness and care. This lecture series asks how visual culture does not merely represent medicine, but actively produces medical knowledge, norms of the body, and ideas of health, normality, risk, and deviance.

The concluding conference on 17 June provides insights into issues surrounding the commodification of art created by people with mental health conditions, and how institutions and estates deal with these issues.

When?   Wednesdays, 18:30-20:00 pm
Where?   University of Vienna (Hs.C1, Campus AAKH) / Foto Arsenal Wien (varying timeslots) / Online

Organisers: Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Vienna) and Felix Hoffmann (Foto Arsenal Wien)

Programme:

11.03.2026 Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Vienna) & Felix Hoffmann (Foto Arsenal Wien)
Introduction: “Imagining the Body: Photography, Medicine and Visual Knowledge”

25.03.2026 Daniela Hahn (Atelierhaus Wien)
“History and Transformation: The New ATELIERHAUS WIEN on the Historic Otto Wagner Areal”

15.04.2026 Monika Perenyei (ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities / Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, HU)
“Psychiatrist Curators: The Asylum Museum and the Images of ‘Madness’ in Interwar Budapest”

22.04.2026 – online – Fiona Johnstone (Durham University, UK)
“Critical Interlopers: Contemporary Artists as Researchers and Collaborators in Healthcare and Medicine”

29.04.2026 Felix Hoffmann (Foto Arsenal Wien)
“Dead or Alive? The Portrait and the Photographic Image”

06.05.2026 – online – Nora Heidorn (University of Vienna)
“Early Obstetrics and the Racialisation of Birth: An Artistic Practice-Research”

13.05.2026 Bernd Stiegler (University of Konstanz, DE)
“England in the 1870ies: Francis Galton’s ‘Composite photography’ and Oscar Gustav Rejlander’s contribution to Charles Darwin’s The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals”

20.05.2026 Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Vienna)
“Living with Long COVID: Health Literacy, Patient Experience and Photography”

27.05.2026 – online – Maria Morata Marco (University of Vienna)
“Complicating Medical Images: Art and the Agency of Sick Bodies in Biomedicine”

03.06.2026, 17:30-19:00 Foto Arsenal Wien – Katrin Luchsinger (ZHdK, Zurich, CH)
“Typification, Fetishisation, Normalisation, Pathologisation: Photography in Psychiatry Around 1920–1930”

10.06.2026 Monika Ankele (Charité –Universitätsmedizin Berlin, DE)
“‘Horizontal!: The Politics and Poetics of the Sickbed’: A Visual Exploration of the Exhibition at the Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité”

17.06.2026, 15:00-19:00 Foto Arsenal Wien
Mini Conference: “Photo Brut – Artistic Practices Between Visual Culture and Health: Museums, Markets and Artists”

  • Nina Ansperger (Director, Museum Gugging)
  • Zofia Płoska–Czartoryska (Tomasz Machciński Foundation, Warsaw)
  • Barbara Safarova (art brut connaissance & diffusion)
  • Sophie Thun (University of Applied Arts, Vienna)

Moderated by:
Monika Pietrzak-Franger (University of Vienna)
Felix Hoffmann (Foto Arsenal Wien)

Die Medizin war noch nie ein rein wissenschaftliches Unterfangen. Sie ist tief in kulturellen Vorstellungswelten, visuellen Regimen und ästhetischen Praktiken verwurzelt: von anatomischen Atlanten, Krankenhausarchitektur und der frühen medizinischen Fotografie bis hin zu zeitgenössischen Bildgebungstechnologien und künstlerischen Auseinandersetzungen mit Krankheit und Pflege.
Im Rahmen der Ausstellung Photo I Brut wird der Frage nachgegangen an welchen Stellen die Fotografie nicht nur darstellt, sondern aktiv medizinisches Wissen, Körpernormen sowie Vorstellungen von Gesundheit, Normalität, Risiko und Abweichung hervorbringt und parallel konstruiert.
Die Konferenz gibt Einblicke in Fragen um Ökonomisierung der Kunst von psychisch kranken Menschen und wie Institutionen und Nachlässe mit diesen Fragen umgehen.

The lecture series is a regular course for MA students (Popular and Media Cultures / Cultural Studies): course description

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