FOX, Howard (1873-1954)
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
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CHRISTIE'S| Auctioneer | CHRISTIE'S |
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| Место проведения | Великобритания, London |
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ID 1514466
Лот 213 | FOX, Howard (1873-1954)
Оценочная стоимость
30000GBP £ 30 000 – 40 000
Fifteen photographs illustrating diseases of the skin [New York, c.1930s].
A rare group of large format photographs of skin diseases affecting patients in the African American community in New York. We have been unable trace any records of Fox’s photographs at auction.
Dr Howard Fox is regarded as the founding father and first president of the American Academy of Dermatology. The son of the dermatologist, medical professor, photographer and Civil War veteran Dr George Henry Fox (1846-1937), he was professor and head of dermatology at the New York University School of Medicine from 1925 to 1938, the first president of the American Board of Dermatology from 1932 to 1945, and Editor-in-Chief of the Archives of Dermatology from 1937 to 1947. In 1921, he published a paper on medical photography and skin disease in which he discussed the challenges and best practices in medical photography of the time particularly for dermatology. He wrote 'I have long been convinced that professional photographers cannot, as a rule, take satisfactory medical photographs. The difficulty lies in posing the subject, as the professional photographer is seldom able to realize exactly what is desired by the physician. This is particularly true in the case of skin diseases'. Fox explained that ‘they lack the exact anatomic condition which is desired to be reproduced’, making it important for physicians to learn basic photographic techniques themselves and to pose the patient’.
Practising at a time when racial biases were widespread in American medicine, it has been said of Fox that his work on dermatology in the African American community further promoted a racialist perspective. Professor David McBride, in his 1991 study From TB to AIDS: Epidemics among Urban Blacks since 1900, writes: 'it is noteworthy how Fox [...] easily drew conclusions about the black race generally from observations of a set of their specific patients'. While his conclusions regularly did not accurately reflect his own statistics, Fox’s studies into the differences in skin diseases between races were certainly influential, particularly his 1908 paper ‘Observation on Skin Diseases in the Negro’ (Journal of Cutaneous Diseases), in which he states: ‘My conviction is firm that negroes do not suffer from skin diseases in general, as often as whites’.
Literature:
Fox, Howard. Observations on Medical Photography with special reference to skin diseases. Archives of Dermatology and Syphilology, July 1, 1921, pp. 27-36; McBride, David. From TB to AIDS: Epidemics among Urban Blacks since 1900. 1991; Tu, Thuy Linh Nguyen. Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam. 2021.
15 large matt silver prints (359 x 434mm, approximately 14 by 17 inches, or the reverse), each signed in ink on the image 'Dr Howard Fox, New York', individually mounted on a thick grey card mount (510 x 610mm, 20 by 24 inches, or the reverse) with a pen and ink caption on white card, each mount inscribed in ink on the reverse 'Dr Howard Fox, 616 Madison Avenue, New York' (occasional slight silver mirroring to images, pin holes to mounts, edges of mounts slightly rubbed, a few minor chips to mounts); housed in a twentieth-century green cloth folding box (box slightly worn). Provenance: Howard Fox MD (1873-1954; each photograph signed by Fox in ink on the image, and with his name and address inscribed on the reverse of each mount: ‘Dr Howard Fox, 616 Madison Avenue, New York’).
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