Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpêtrière
"Didi-Huberman composes an absolutely fascinating story about the emergence of modern subjectivity from the netherworld and darkrooms of nineteenth-century medicine. This gorgeously written and provocative landmark study is indispensable for anyone interested in questions of gender, the history of science, photography, and medicine: in short, in how we see ourselves as who we are." Ulrich Baer, Department of German, New York University, author of Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma"... a significant examination of an often blurred landscape between pain and performance..." Allan Graubard Leonardo Reviews"This poetic account of the relationship between photography and madness will interest any student of art or mental health." Publishers Weekly Forecasts"...a significant examination of an often blurred landscape between pain and performance." Allan Graubard Leonardo Reviews"Van Gogh and hysteria? Proust and catalepsy! Sigmund Freud and theater? Charcot's influence is suddenly registering everywhere, not only in studies of fin-de-siècle medicine and psychology, but also in aesthetics, philosophy, and photographic history. Charcot figures in reexaminations of the "new psychologies" of the 1890s, the birth of Freudian psychology, male and female hysteria, the designs of art nouveau lamp posts, art manifestos of the Symbolists, the novels of Huysmans and Proust, the landscapes of Van Gogh and Gauguin, and the history of flash photography. No wonder. The images of his patients at the infamous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris strike a thoroughly contemporary and postmodern chord, one that is brilliantly brought to life in this remarkable book by Georges Didi-Huberman."--Robert Sobieszek, Curator of Photography, Los Angeles County Museum of Art