Zes microscoopopnamen van bacteriën, waaronder de cholerabacterie before 1890

Curator: Here we have “Six Microscopic Photographs of Bacteria, including the Cholera Bacteria," dating back to before 1890, attributed to Carl Günther. The print showcases magnified bacteria cultures— a subject both repulsive and mesmerizing, don't you think? Editor: Absolutely, it has a morbid beauty. The composition, arranged like specimens in a formal display, seems at odds with the underlying reality of disease and decay, a compelling arrangement. The tonal range is quite subtle too. Curator: Indeed. Günther's choice to isolate these cultures is striking. Consider the moment it was made. It’s a time when germ theory is beginning to take hold, transforming society's understanding of illness, class, and responsibility. To visually present them in such an ordered manner is significant. Editor: The formal aesthetic seems designed to reassure the viewer, but one has to question: reassure whom? It speaks volumes that images of such vital, potentially lifesaving information, were available and being made by a very specific social class during the period. These photos both confirm a social awareness, and confirm the boundaries in which this new understanding was allowed to exist and to which populations these insights pertained. The ordering suggests control and classification—the clinical gaze in full effect, the same is still alive today within Western institutions. Curator: I agree—but I also wonder how much the starkness and repetition are driven purely by the aesthetic constraints of scientific image-making at the time. These bacterial forms gain their own abstract quality. You see the variation in pattern, the rhythm of repetition. Editor: But this seemingly neutral presentation, a “scientific" realism, masks an unequal playing field where access to preventative medicine and even knowledge were profoundly shaped by gender, economic, and racial disparity. Curator: It highlights the tensions of a scientific advancement which often had uneven societal implementation and effect, but through focusing on its presentation alone, an alternate history is also highlighted where pattern and visual form took equal weighting. A unique position for the image itself, where aesthetics are entwined with vital medical advancements. Editor: This visual rhetoric emphasizes the vital importance of the scientific information. It’s a moment when art and science are very publicly negotiating new terrain of how to look, see, and believe what is put in front of them. Curator: Well, regardless, the visual qualities of pattern here grant us further insights in accessing not only historical knowledge, but potential aesthetics from the very base matter of living.