ABSTRACT

This chapter addresses some of the questions by documenting the ways in which eugenicists employed photography in their depictions of people labelled the feeble-minded. It explores their use of modes of presentation to describe a classification scheme for feeble-mindedness, the mutually amplifying juxtaposition, and other photographic techniques such as printing and grouping. The chapter presents some examples of photographic illusions found in eugenic clinical photography. Caption and classification illusions stem from a mindset that sees taxonomy as an integral component of scientific method. W. E. Fernald added, "The recognized field of mental defect has been gradually extended and widened, and clinical types and degrees of feeble-mindedness are recognized by the alienist which are not yet familiar to the medical profession generally". Producing a large number of photographs in an apparently logical and orderly sequence gives the strong impression that feeble-mindedness is not only recognizable and understood but that eugenics was based on good science.