Medical

The chapter discusses medical photography by focusing on the visual framing of indigenous burial practices as drivers of epidemic diseases. Examining the ways in which this theme was developed in the case of 1930s plague-stricken colonial Madagascar within the broader context of the emergence of epidemic photography, the article asks readers to look at the more recent, postcolonial photography of indigenous burials as conduits of contagion in the context of the Ebola epidemic (2014–2016) in West Africa. The chapter argues that critically engaging with the colonial visual tropes that inform twenty-first-century epidemic and pandemic responses is an essential tool for decolonising global health.