Carleton Alumnus and University of Pittsburgh Professor to Discuss the Use of Photography in 19th-Century Scientific Representation

Josh Ellenbogen, a graduate of the Carleton Class of 1992 and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, will deliver a lecture on Francis Galton’s photographic work on Monday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Boliou Hall Auditorium on the Carleton College campus.  In his talk, entitled “The Monstrous, the Meaningless, and Margins of Error,” Ellenbogen will discuss Galton’s adventurous endeavor to capture marginal populations through the photographic medium, and how his projects contributed to a new standard that emerged in the 19th century to redefine what comprised a scientifically adequate photograph. This event is free and open to the public.

As an anthropologist and statistician, Francis Galton embarked on a photographic mission in the late 1870s to produce “portraiture of the invisible.” Instead of making photographs of individual objects or things observable to the eye, Galton aimed to create photographs of ideas and concepts that encompassed all individuals within that class. Fro example, rather than photographing individual criminals or lunatics, he sought to capture images that embraced what it looked like or meant to be “the criminal” or “the lunatic.” This project marked an important change in the medium’s standards for creating a scientifically valid photograph; instead of relying on statistical and mathematical formation to define a photograph’s scientific value, photographers began to view how the image captured non-visible entities as a measure of its scientific credibility.

Ellenbogen is the director of graduate studies and assistant professor of history of photography, modernism, historiography, and aesthetics at the University of Pittsburgh.   After earning his BA from Carleton College in 1992, Ellenbogen received his PhD in art history from the University of Chicago in 2005. His dissertation, entitled “Photography and the Imperceptible: Bertillion, Galton, Marey,” addressed the uses of photography in 19th-century scientific representation.

Boliou Hall is located on the Carleton College campus and is accessible via Highway 19.  This event is sponsored by the Art and Art History Department at Carleton College. For more information regarding the lecture, please contact Patt German at (507) 222-4341.