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An Iconography of Contagion
20th-century Health Posters and the
Visual Representation of Infectious Disease
June 16 – August 15, 2008
National Academies’ Keck Center
500 Fifth St, NW, First Floor Gallery
Viewable by appointment, call (202) 334-2436
September 2 – December 19, 2008
National Academy of Sciences
2100 C St, NW, Upstairs Gallery
Open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Free! Photo ID required.
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About a hundred years ago, public health took a visual turn. Health professionals began to organize coordinated campaigns that sought to mobilize the public through wall posters, illustrated pamphlets, motion pictures, and glass slide projections. In a world increasingly saturated with the images of mass media, health campaigners were inspired to present new figures of contagion, and recycle old ones, using modernist aesthetics, graphic manipulations, humor, theatrical lighting, and perspectival distortions. Health campaigns had to compete with the world of advertising, comic strips, photo-magazines, tabloids, animated cartoons, pulp fiction, Hollywood, and later, television. The designers and artists recruited for such campaigns devised a new iconography of contagion that emphasized visual legibility and the pleasure of the view.
Organized by the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health.
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