Epidemic corpses and photographic obfuscation

The chapter examines the ways in which epidemic photography has been implicated in processes of obfuscation through an examination of photographs of “epidemic corpses” and their disposal in the long twentieth century. Considering the examples of plague in 1920s Madagascar and Ebola in 2010s West Africa, it explores the epidemiological and more-than-epidemiological obfuscation involved in photographing cadavers of victims of infectious disease epidemics and their burial. Through an examination of political ontologies and pandemic imaginaries the chapter argues that presenting such photographs as indexical representations of a medical or epidemiological reality establishes a double obfuscation. First, an obfuscation of the colonial narratives and tropes communicated by these photographs. Second, an obfuscation of the anthropological narrative on what it means to be human communicated by them.