Medical Images and the Perception of Pain

By Sally Fama Cochrane

9" x 13". Spring 2010.

I painted this diptych as my final project for the course Imag(in)ing Disease. The course covered the various ways in which bodies and illness are and have been visualized -- from photographs of hysterics in the 19th century to CT images, MRI's, and ultrasounds. These two paintings show how the perception of pain can change with a diagnosis: in the first panel, the leg is the focus of the pain, and is compared with an anatomy book as the patient tries to understand how general medical knowledge could be applied to his case. In the second panel, post-diagnosis, the MRI of his back reveals the leg pain was caused by a pinched nerve in the lumbar vertebrae, changing the focus from the leg to the back. In the first panel we view the pain from the restricted point of view of the patient, while in the second panel the diagnosis and accompanying MRI has allowed the patient to view himself from a more removed standpoint: we see his back, the reflection of his front, and a photograph of his insides. I aimed to show with these paintings how difficult it is to say which representation is more "true" -- the book is an illustration, the MRI is another kind of illustration, the mirror is a reflection, and the bodies themselves are painted.

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