Matylda Szewczyk, de l'Université de Varsovie (IKP, département des cultures visuelles), interviendra le 31 mars 2015 de 15h à 17h dans une séance conjointe des séminaires de Charlotte Bigg : Voir/Savoir : images et cultures visuelles dans les sciences et de Morgane Labbé : Politiques de population en Europe de l'Est au 20e siècle. Entre réforme sociale et biopolitique (EHESS, 190-198 avenue de France, Paris 13e, salle 015, RdC)

Son intervention portera sur le thème suivant "Medical and documentary images of pregnancy and the fetus in Polish culture after 1989"

Abstract
The lecture will explore the ways in which the technical images of pregnancy and the fetus have been present/entered the public sphere in Poland after 1989. This has to be seen with regard to both social/cultural and medical/technological changes (growing popularity of pregnancy ultrasonography, introduction of digital media and the Internet) of the period. Shortly before and after the 1989 there were mostly "imported" documentary images of pregnancy and the fetus available in Polish social sphere: like Lennart Nilsson's albums, reprinted in Polish, or (in)famous "Silent scream" by Jack Duane Dabner and Bernard Nathanson, widely presented also to school children. They will serve as the starting point for the presentation. Different social and political occurrences in the nineties (such as the anti-abortion law of 1993, or, on the other hand, the launching of the campaign "Childbirth with Dignity") will serve as a background for the further discussion of the cultural presence and circulation of technical images of the fetus, on different levels of culture (in medicine, popular culture, within the changing private and public sphere, in pregnancy instruction manuals or, finally, as often self-reflexive images in art). The cultural meaning of their technical origin will also be problematized. I will try to tell the visual history of the time with regard to the social circulation of medical and documentary images of pregnancy and the fetus, and the way they were perceived and involved within contemporary discussions.