Novedad editorial: Portraits of Violence: War and the Aesthetics of Disfigurement
Author: Suzannah Biernoff
Portraits of Violence
explores the image and idea of facial disfigurement in one of its most
troubling modern formations, as a symbol and consequence of war. It
opens with Nina Berman’s iconic photograph Marine Wedding,
which provoked a debate about the medical, military, and psychological
response to serious combat injuries. While these issues remain urgent,
it is equally crucial to interrogate the representation of war and
injury. The concepts of valor, heroism, patriotism, and courage assume
visible form and do their cultural work when they are personified and
embodied. The mutilated or disabled veteran’s body can connote the
brutalizing, dehumanizing potential of modern combat.
Suzannah Biernoff draws on a wide variety of sources mainly from WWI but
also contemporary photography and computer games. Each chapter revolves
around particular images: Marine Wedding is discussed
alongside Stuart Griffiths’ portraits of British veterans; Henry Tonks’
drawings of WWI facial casualties are compared to the medical
photographs in the Gillies Archives; the production of portrait masks
for the severely disfigured is approached through the lens of
documentary film and photography; and finally the haunting image of one
of Tonks’s patients reappears in BioShock, a highly successful computer
game. The book simultaneously addresses a neglected area in disability
studies; puts disfigurement on the agenda for art history and visual
studies; and makes a timely and provocative contribution to the
literature on the First World War.