EXHIBITION RECORD

Extraordinary Bodies: Photographs from the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians

Saturday, October 2, 2004 through Sunday, November 14, 2004

The Mütter Museum, one of the last medical museums from the nineteenth century, originated with Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter, a professor of surgery who collected unique specimens and models for teaching purposes and donated them in 1856 to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Visual representation of anatomy and pathology as viewed by the camera dates back to the advent of the daguerreotype when doctors and scientists used photography to create anatomical atlases as well as document disease and trauma. Photographs also allowed physicians to keep exact visual records of cases long after patients died.

Extraordinary Bodies: Photographs from the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians presents work by current photographers alongside powerful images from the Mütter Museum’s renowned historical photography collection. The images in the exhibition extend the boundaries of traditional photographic subject matter, finding beauty not in conventional forms, but in internal marvels and in the enigma of those whose bodies - deformed, broken, and disfigured - have suffered physical abnormality, trauma, or destructive disease. This exhibition offers a rare opportunity for people who have not experienced the medical student’s rite of passage and initiation into the singular mysteries of the profession to encounter powerful, inspiring, and enthralling images of nature’s challenges to human life.