Capturing Chronic Illness

Endometriosis, asthma, HIV, ME, depression…what is chronic illness? How do we see chronic illness? Chronic illness is often not visible on the body. It can also be hidden by gender, sexuality, race and age. How does this shape what we think about and how we live with long-term illness? Photography offers creative possibilities of capturing life with an illness. It also allows us to reveal and reimagine bodies living with illness.

We are now running a call for photos to be included in an online photography exhibition.
Presenting a collection of invited and submitted work, the exhibition will explore the many ways that photography can capture chronic illness and help us reimagine bodies and health. This exhibition will feature work that engages with how people living with a long-term illness imagine their lives.

On Friday, 20th November, medical humanities scholars Dr Donna McCormack (University of Surrey) and Dr Ingrid Young (Edinburgh of Edinburgh) will host an interactive discussion that explores the issues raised by the exhibition. This discussion will be held online and will explore a number of issues raised by the exhibition.

This event will be of interest to anyone interested in photography, to those affected by chronic illness and for anyone interested in health and art.

This event is part of the Being Human Festival and is organised by the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society at the University of Edinburgh as part of their Visualizing Bodies series.