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Depth Perception: Surgical Film and the Problem of Anatomical Legibility
Jacob Sarnoff (1886–1961) was a pioneering physician-filmmaker. He was an early and enthusiastic proponent of using film to educate new physicians and demonstrate surgical procedures. He made hundreds of films, some of which survive in the archives of the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. I’m interested in Jacob Sarnoff because I think his…
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Anatomy on film: the imaginary archive
A lot of my research is on medical filmmaking: films that physicians and other medical professionals made for each other. It turns out that there are a lot of these. Doctors have been making movies since the invention of the medium. I’m fascinated by a strain of thought that recurs frequently in discussions of anatomical…