When it comes to the wondrous, seeing is believing. From this page, you can explore some of the ways that “monsters” have been depicted over the centuries. Woodcuts in early modern texts, preservation in medical museums, and photography all have been used to display people. These technologies allowed one person’s image to travel across the world and allowed their subjects to “survive” beyond death. 

Portrait of Ambriose Pare, 1614 
Source: www.cppdigitallibrary.org 

Figure de la beste Thanacth, 1614 
Title taken from caption of woodcut. 
Source: www.cppdigitallibrary.org 

Wood Cuts

In the early modern period (1500-1750) images in texts were created by using woodcuts. An artist would create the image by carving it into a block of wood. The surfaces left after carving then appeared black when rolled with ink and pressed to the page. Monsters-- and wonders of all sorts-- were popular subjects of these texts, especially early medical texts. These books, like On Monsters and Marvels by Ambroise Paré (1510?-1590), told background stories about the “monster” and provided an image to go with the story. Oftentimes, the physician had not actually seen the monster himself but only heard about it through others. This is why many of these woodcuts look so fantastical. Toad heads on human bodies, a baby with angel wings and a single eye, or people who appear as patchworks of various animal parts; these images indeed look strange and wondrous. Perhaps these strange images are a result of people’s descriptions when recounting stories of travel, or perhaps they are meant to be metaphorical. 

Museums 

In the 18th century, surgeons discovered how to use chemicals, like alcohol or formalin, to preserve human and animal body parts for long periods of time. These anatomical preservations became valuable and useful tools for students learning medicine. Instead of learning about the body through images, they could now study actual body parts preserved in jars. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, many medical schools had a museum containing anatomical preservations, as well as bones, drawings, instruments, and other materials, that students could study. Surgeons were especially interested in collecting “monstrous births” during this period. This is because gestation, the development of the fetus during pregnancy, was not well understood. This is why most medical museums, like the Mütter, have teratological collections. These bodies were important clues to answering questions about human development. Unlike images in books, however, not everyone could see anatomical preservations. Many of these museums weren’t truly “public,” like the Mütter is today; instead, they were restricted to physicians, surgeons, and students. 

Performers and Photography 

Born in Locana, Italy in 1877, the Tocci Brothers performed under the name "Two-Headed Boy," and were popular in the U.S. in the late 19th Century. 15810.22, Historical Medical Photographs, Historical Medical Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia 

In the 1860s, photography was a new technology. Traveling circuses adopted it to create and sell pictures of performers, often staged in professional studios. Freak show performers often dressed up either in very fancy dress or in costume, and they posed with props that often accentuated their abnormality. Photographs were then printed as postcards and sold at circuses and museums. Visitors could either collect the postcards or send them to people who were not able to see the circus themselves. Some performers, like Chang and Eng Bunker, had a great deal of say in how these photographs were posed and how they were presented within them. This was not true for all performers, but many did find photography to be a meaningful way to take control of how their bodies were presented and seen by others. 

Medicine and Photography 

Photography also became an extraordinary medical tool for documenting disease and illness. Rather than relying on illustrations or descriptions, photography meant a condition could be shown as it was. It could also be distributed to others through medical journals, textbooks, or published case studies.

The subjects of these medical photos were often photographed nude or nearly so, usually in a medical setting. and photographed in a way that emphasized the condition that the photographer found interesting or unusual. So, while photography allowed a more precise picture of conditions, they also objectified their subjects in ways that often obscured their dignity, emotions, and humanity. 

Film and "Freaks" 

With the medium of film’s increasing popularity in the early 20th Century came new grounds for the representation of non-normative bodies. Though some short films were produced by sideshows, and others were created for medical purposes, the most famous and enduring example from this era is Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks, produced by MGM. Fresh off the heels of his 1931 success, Dracula, there were great expectations at the time of the film’s release. Browning held auditions for the ensemble of “freaks” that would lead the film, and ended up with many of the top performers of the time. Despite the producer’s insistence that what was portrayed was close in keeping with the conditions of real circuses, many critics and audience members alike found the film to be morally objectionable, and indeed its lack of success at the box office mirrored these attitudes. 

The plot of the film revolves around Hans, a little person who has become infatuated with Cleopatra, a trapeze artist born of “normal” proportions. After much courting, Cleopatra agrees to marry Hans, though the viewer is made aware that she is only interested in the fortune he has inherited through the warnings of Frieda, another little person employed by the Circus as a bare-back rider. The scene below has become one of the film’s most iconic, portraying the groups’ intended acceptance of Cleopatra as “one of us,” and ultimately her vitriolic rejection of their otherness.

Though the film attempts to portray its group of “freaks” sympathetically, imbuing them with a sense of humanity and dignity at times, it ultimately portrays them too frequently, and finally, as “monsters,” and MGM ultimately pulled the film shortly after its release, relegating it temporarily to obscurity, and ultimately ensuring its place as a divisive cult classic.