Open Body

From 13th December 2024 to 27th April 2025 – Museu del Cinema

Illness in photography and early cinema (1880-1930)

Images of the sick body in the medical and cinematic fields between the years 1890 and 1930, show a parallel journey that takes us from medical diagnosis devices to those of cinematic recording. On this journey, both the pre-cinematography visual records, as well as magic lantern plates or chronophotography, must be considered.

From a medical perspective, the invention of X-rays and the advent of microscopic photography allow us to display the interior of the body in an unprecedented way. The context of the time, with experiences such as the Great War or the so-called “Spanish flu”, was the occasion to implement this gaze that penetrated the interior of the sick body.

Films from the time – both medical records and fiction – bear witness to this interest. In this period, the filmed sick body transports us from the grotesque body to the body in rehabilitation or the body affected by pandemics, passing through its own fragmentation. As counter-images, comedy and burlesque turn it into a parody and satire of medicine and its advances.

This exhibition is the result of collective work carried out within the research project Visions of the sick body in film and photography: physical and mental pathologies (1890-1920) funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.