This Audio Article (or video essay) narrates an article (which you can find here) about the mysterious case of the enigmatic shocked man of Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (c. 1806-1875).
Adrien Tournachon (c. 1825 – 1903) and other photographers were hired by the French physician and neurologist, Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne de Boulogne (c. 1806-1875), to document the experiments he conducted on the effects of electric shocks to the muscles of the human face. Duchenne de Boulogne specialized in studying and treating neuromuscular disorders, and the subjects of his photography may have been his patients, or people from nearby hospital wards. The mysterious shocked man featured in many of his photographs can be found in a series of facial expression images published as a medical photography book by Duchenne de Boulogne between 1860-1862. Institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art believe the photographs were originally taken between 1854 and 1856, whereas other museums (such as the Getty Museum) widen the timeframe to between 1852-1856. In addition to being a pioneer in the field of medical photography, Duchenne’s facial expression picture collection garnered respect and admiration as artistic photography in the art community.
You can read the original article that this Audio Article is based upon, HERE.
Check out other articles about art, HERE.
All of the images of the shocked people in this video are Open Access or Public Domain via institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, and the Getty Museum.
The Music used for the majority of the video is W. A. Mozart’s, Symphony No.38 in D major – A Far Cry (via the YouTube Audio Library).
