Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates albums sent to Sultan Abdulhamit II containing x-rays of wounds sustained by Ottoman soldiers in the Turkish-Greek war of 1897. By proposing that we see xrays as images of the battlefield, it challenges the separation between medical imagery and political photography.

Paper long abstract:

Among the 911 albums that comprise photo enthusiast Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamit II's vast collection is one introducing xray technology to the sovereign. X-ray technology was discovered by German W C Roentgen in 1895. Three other albums contain x-rays of wounds sustained by Ottoman soldiers in the Turkish-Greek war of 1897. In fact at least according to one historian of radiology the earliest use of Xrays in military surgery was in the Ottoman empire in a makeshift hospital on the palace ground for wounded soldiers.

This paper rethinks depictions of political events through the example of these x-ray photographs. I argue that direct depictions are not the only ways in which political events and military battles enter the visual archives. Imaging in the sense of medical imaging is the representation of an object for the purpose of medical diagnosis or data collection, the transformation of data into a replica of a different form. Just as the x-ray image showing the shrapnel in a soldier's wrist also tells a story of war without being a representation of the battlefield, the larger collection of Abdülhamid II's photographs taken together can be read as a form of imaging the empire at a critical historical moment. This paper challenges common sense separations between medical photography and political photography by turning to an example where the sovereign who orders his army into battle is the same person who allows for the use of a new technology that renders soldiers' bodies visible in new ways.