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13 results
  • Article
  • Article

A virtual view of history

| Marina GernerSteven Pocock

Step inside Anne Frank’s house or explore the galleries in a museum destroyed by fire. VR brings history and art satisfyingly close when we’re unable to get there in person.

  • Article
  • Article

Mary Bishop and the surveillant gaze

| Rose RuaneMary Bishop

Writer and artist Rose Ruane explores the paintings of Mary Bishop, created during a 30-year stay in a psychiatric hospital, which speak of constant medical surveillance and censorious self-examination.

  • Article
  • Article

Good animals, bad humans?

| Simon Jarrett

Could an animal be more evolved than a human? Victorian psychologists thought that in some cases the answer could be ‘yes’.

  • Article
  • Article

Native Americans and the dehumanising force of the photograph

| Allison C Meier

In the second part of Native Americans through the 19th-century lens, we delve deeper into the ambivalent messages within the images.

  • Article
  • Article

Reversing the psychiatric gaze

| Leah Sidi

Nineteenth-century psychiatrists were keen to categorise their patients’ illnesses reductively – by their physical appearance. But we can see a far more complex picture of mental distress, revealed by those patients able to express their inner worlds in art.

  • Long read
  • Long read

Our complicated love affair with light

| Lauren ColleeSteven Pocock

Sunlight is essential, but our relationship with artificial light is less clear cut. It expands what’s possible; it also obscures and polices. In this long read, Lauren Collee pits light against night, and reveals the shady places in between.

  • Article
  • Article

Fantastic beasts and unnatural history

| Cassidy Phillips

Find out how a 17th-century compendium of the natural world came to present fantastical beasts –like dragons – as real, living creatures.

  • Article
  • Article

Air of threat

| Chloe AridjisMichael Salu

Novelist Chloe Aridjis vividly describes the suffocating atmosphere of Mexico City, as a combination of topography, crowded neighbourhoods, and reckless political diktats create a downward spiral.

  • Article
  • Article

The Ladies of Llangollen

| Sarah Bentley

As we celebrate LGBT History Month, Sarah Bentley explores the relationship between the two 18th-century women known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

  • Article
  • Article

The solidarity of sickness

| Sinéad GleesonCamilla Greenwell

Visiting an injured friend in hospital prompts writer Sinéad Gleeson to reflect on the instant rapport forged between compatriots in the kingdom of the sick.

  • Article
  • Article

Crime drama and the realistic cadaver

| Hildegunn M S TraaSteven Pocock

Today we are accustomed to the increasingly realistic look of dead bodies in on-screen dramas. Special-effects expert Hildegunn M S Traa reveals how crime and morgue scenes reflect the social idea of death.

  • Article
  • Article

Audrey and her family

| Elena Carter

In working on Audrey Amiss’s archive, Elena is getting closer to understanding her. But the way her niece and nephew remember Audrey adds essential detail to the picture.

  • Book extract
  • Book extract

My important, ridiculous nose

| A L Kennedy

The nose is a much-maligned appendage, but it’s a powerful organ capable of invoking powerful emotions from past memories and sexual attraction.