How to Look at Sexology: Towards a Meta-archive of Queer Medical Photography

J Med Humanit. 2026 Jul 24. doi: 10.1007/s10912-026-10049-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This article offers a metatheoretical analysis of contemporary research on sexology from and beyond the late nineteenth century. We draw attention to the use of (pseudo)medical photography in this scholarship and the diverse methods developed by researchers to engage with this sensitive material-from the black bar, to description in lieu of reproduction, to affective speculation. Our article equips queer medical humanities researchers with a critical account of the modes of ‘looking’ we employ in our study of queer history. We demonstrate how the sexological visual archive has become increasingly central to queer medical humanities scholarship that interrogates the medical violences at the heart of queer histories. Our article dwells not on this photographic archive but, rather, on a meta-archive of contemporary critical methods of looking at, examining, and showing these photographs. Through this meta-archive, we ask: How is the fraught nature of sexological photographs registered, ignored, or challenged by researchers, be it in terms of their often disturbing content or the sometimes hostile conditions of their production? How do we ‘look’ at and ‘show’ these photographs ethically-or can we? What risks (to the historical patient, to the photograph, and to each other) are being negotiated in these encounters? Our article attempts to respond to these questions by recognizing the multitude of our visual research practices in sexology studies. It brings together methods both ubiquitous and exceptional to point to a research future being built in the present: one that seeks new and more ethical ways of looking at, for, and with the queer patient.

PMID:42496919 | DOI:10.1007/s10912-026-10049-y