Abstract
Jo Spence (1934-1992), a British artist, photographer, writer, and educator, left an indelible mark on the world of art and medicine through her revolutionary approach to photography. Her commitment to art as a catalyst for political change leaves us with a catalogue of work which transcends traditional boundaries and interrogates cultural dynamics of gender, class, and health.
This article explores the intersection of Spence's work with Michel Foucault's theory of the medical gaze, focussing on Spence’s ‘autopathographical’ photographic documentation of her experience living with and dying from cancer. Two of Spence’s seminal photographic projects, "The Picture of Health" (1982-1984) and "The Final Project" (1991-1992), form the core of the analysis.
Drawing on the contents of the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive, this article argues that Spence's art functions as a profound critique of the medical gaze by centring her personal experience of disease through self-portraiture, challenging Western tendencies toward the medicalization of death, and using photography to amplify the expression of suffering as a rejection of the medical gaze's passive patient positioning.
Through Spence's lens, we witness a profound re-evaluation of the medical gaze, as she defies its conventions and invites us to reconsider how we perceive the diseased body, placing the entire individual at the forefront of our understanding. In a world where medicine often reduces patients to diagnostic data, Spence's work serves as a powerful reminder of the human stories that underlie every illness.
Recommended Citation
Jakes, Charlotte E.
(2025)
"Jo Spence and the Reorganisation of the Medical Gaze: “Neither ‘Heroine’ or ‘Victim’, Merely a Person in Struggle”,"
Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine: Vol. 10:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/vol10/iss1/4