ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of visual evidence practices employed by the late nineteenth-century anti-vaccine movement. At the time, the changes in medicine, photography and media use destabilized the popular scientific discourse, and thus instigated the production of alternative facts with respect to vaccine theories. While immunizations were developed, photography augmented the visual representation of the body, and newspapers and magazines became modern mass media, contributing to the dissemination of hygiene education. The anti-vaccine league employed these media strategies to successfully promote their material to large parts of the population. An analysis of anti-vaccinist Hugo Wegener's 1912 collection Der Impf-Friedhof shows how images were rhetorically coded as objective, scientific evidence. In order to frame their communication accordingly, the anti-vaccine campaigners relied on imagery that focused on visible, straightforward and ultimately circumstantial aspects of vaccines—a strategy that is similar to the academically sanctioned hygiene education at the time and shows the similarity of the two opposing positions. The perception of anti-vaccine images was furthermore fuelled by the complexities of the immunization process, which created a void of information. This void was filled with uncanny beliefs, reinforced by the characteristics of the media of photography and the printing press.
