Operating Room, Fort Riley, Joseph Judd Pennell

Artwork Overview

1866–1922
Operating Room, Fort Riley, 1906
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: gelatin silver print
Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 20.3 x 25.7 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 8 x 10 1/8 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 14 x 19 in
Credit line: Transfer from Kenneth Spencer Research Library
Accession number: 1979.0034
Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body

These photographs depict operating rooms in the rural United States. The image on the right—taken by studio photographer Joseph Judd Pennell while documenting the army post of Fort Riley, Kansas—communicates calm and order amid equipment that was cutting edge in 1906. The image on the left was taken in Jerome, Arizona, an early mining settlement that is now a “ghost town.” The eerie abandonment of ghost towns is mirrored in the scene: a bare hospital bed positioned beneath a surgical light in a dilapidated facility.

Healing, Knowing, Seeing the Body

These photographs depict operating rooms in the rural United States. The image on the right—taken by studio photographer Joseph Judd Pennell while documenting the army post of Fort Riley, Kansas—communicates calm and order amid equipment that was cutting edge in 1906. The image on the left was taken in Jerome, Arizona, an early mining settlement that is now a “ghost town.” The eerie abandonment of ghost towns is mirrored in the scene: a bare hospital bed positioned beneath a surgical light in a dilapidated facility.

Exhibitions

Thomas Southall, curator
1978–1979
Cassandra Mesick Braun, curator
2021
Cassandra Mesick Braun, curator
2021