Figure 24: Extreme pain to the point of exhaustion, the head of Christ and memory of love or ecstatic gaze. 1854 - 1856

This photograph, "Figure 24," was created by French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne in the mid-19th century as part of his study on the physiology of facial expressions. Duchenne used photography to document and classify the muscular mechanisms behind human emotions. What we see here is an exploration, or perhaps even an exploitation, of the body that provokes questions about scientific objectivity and human dignity. The subject's pained expression, labeled as "extreme pain to the point of exhaustion," is a performance of suffering orchestrated by Duchenne’s manipulation of facial muscles using electrical probes. Duchenne’s work reflects the 19th-century scientific fascination with categorizing and controlling the human body, framing the subject as both a medical specimen and a stand-in for religious ecstasy by referencing "the head of Christ." The image hovers uneasily between science, religion, and art. It pushes us to consider the ethics of representation. How do we negotiate the boundaries of pain, identity, and representation?