When the photograph speaks: Photo-analysis in narrative medicine

摘要

I am exhilarated and gratified that contemporary narrative pedagogy in medicine is making room for visual media as integral to our evolving understanding of the care of the sick. The pedagogical challenges of integrating visual and photographic theory with narrative medicine have lead to a deep questioning of the clinical and aesthetic complexities of narrative and image, creating new research questions and implications for practice. Leading the way, recent national and international research conferences have contributed to forging meaningful connections among photography studies, history of medicine, clinical practice, and visual art.1 Participants in various forms of training in narrative medicine or humanities and medicine are more and more frequently invited not only to read and write but, as part of developing rigorous narrative competencies, to let images speak through acts of responsive attention. The powers of the image are fundamental to connections among our knowing {gnarus, a Latin root of narrative), telling (narro)2, and desiring selves. They erupt at times with the velocity of sudden insight ("Aha! I see the connection now!"); at other moments, these powers emerge gradually, with the recognition that flights of thought benefit from the concretization and focus that visual artifacts and images provide.