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• 1 2022-12-10T17:15:15-08:00 Vision And Truth 1 plain 2022-12-10T17:15:15-08:00  

  The use of images of the body’s interior to reveal the truth below the surface of the body is a primary method used in Western culture. This practice was often used in present day as a way to see someone’s “true” identity or real self. Michel Foucault was interested in  the different types of looking and in his book Birth of the Clinic he was interested in the idea that bodily truth can be made visible. However he said not to let one sense cloud the judgement of the others “ Foucault argues that one should not let the appearance of the sensorial triangulation lead to any illusions about the equality between the three senses at play”(Siisianen). He made an account of the hospital-based teaching and research in 1790s France and how it relates to science and visuality while being primarily focused on the clinic.

  Vision is understood to be a primary way to gain knowledge because as humans what we see, we tend to believe. For example, an x-ray of a person’s bones can tell whether or not there is a fracture or damage to a bone is considerably more reliable than the person’s description of the sensation they are feeling. Foucault determined that vision is crucial regarding bodies and subjects, and at the same time vision can play different roles simultaneously in regimes of truth because there are multiple medical and scientific ways of looking.

  Foucault’s description of looking is linked to other activities like experimenting, measuring, analyzing, and ordering. These activities separate the idea of appearances being undeniable from the analytical clinical gaze he described. The clinical gaze and its legacy is contradictory because vision may be the predominant factor, but it depends on other sensory and cognitive processes.

  With the introduction of technologies such as MRIs, CAT scans, ultrasound, and fiber optics and x-rays, looking into the body’s interior is the most efficient it has ever been. With images that show the body’s interior, the scale of the subject is important and should be recognized. With microscopic lens technology, it is now possible to see a blood cell which can not be seen by the naked eye and scale is important when using micro-photos. Lennart Nilsson who was known for his photographs of living fetuses was one of the pioneers of this type of photography. “Each image is in itself stunning, glistening with unabashed magnificence and visual excess as a modernist principle of balance fends off an eruption of the grotesque” (Jain).His images were published in books about human biology. The photos are colorized in a way to better distinguish different parts, but at the same time the colors make the subject appear unnatural. When we look at these images, we are intrigued by the colors and the textures of the image because we believe that is what it looks like in our bodies. Due to the color and blown-up scale of the image, it is presented as something of awe or otherworldly, but most people would have mixed feelings about seeing the representation of their bodies.

  The advances that allow photographers to photograph the smallest elements within the body take a similar path to the advancements of medical tools that are used to look inside a body to aid in a diagnosis. From the late twentieth century, advancements from the use of only x-rays which mainly photographs bones to now using MRIs, sonograms, CT scans, and PET scans to read soft tissue and organs. The images that are produced help us understand the body so that medical professionals can be more effective. The most common medical images are brain scans and this is because they are used in news and media to show mental states and disorders. These are typically color coded as a way for viewers to get an idea of what medical specialists understand about its complexity. Joseph Dumit noted that these images are more purposefully made as a way of showing an abnormality instead of a normal brain, but when trying to diagnose mental illness, it is easier to use psychiatric evaluation techniques. Since machine imaging is seen in a positive light, it comes with power to suggest what can be said to be a fact of a brain disorder. It is because of this that brain scans are used in legal matters and can be used as a type of excuse to avoid the harshest punishment in a court case. The brain gets seen and recognized as an aesthetic object due to the colorization of its parts in images. ”Although claiming to be the truth about its subject, the extraordinary aestheticization of the Nilsson/National Geographic body rewrites the body and its needs as culture and as property, civilizing it and supervising any threatening or bizarre fragments.” (Jain)