Portrait of Isabella, by Siân Davey, 2020. Bella wears a blue top and skirt, red cardigan and white trainers. She stands in front of a green background with left hand on her hip. Isabella speaks in the accompanying audio about the impact of finding out about her mother’s mental health condition later in life, re-evaluates her childhood experiences and their impact on how she perceives her own genetic condition. Each sitter was asked to chose three words to describe themselves. Isabella chose daughter, editor, and traveller.

One of a set of 33 prints commissioned for Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries from significant British photographer Siân Davey. Within one set of 21 for ‘Medicine and Bodies’, members of the participation project ‘When medicine defines what’s ‘normal’’ shaped the choice of sitters and style of portraits to encourage discussion around the themes of diagnosis and medical labelling, and their impact on lives and perceptions of normality. Versions of the portraits have been specially created for the 25-year life span of the Medicine galleries, either as life-size physical portraits, or as digital images to accompany audio discussions. These archival portrait prints of each work have been produced specially for the museum art collection by Davey.

Both sets of prints reflect the aspirations of the ‘When medicine defines what’s normal’ participants to show the varied personalities of sitters. Each person is represented with a variety of poses and expressions, some with props, and against background colours carefully chosen with the participants to work with the wider gallery palette. Some sitters chose to be photographed with family members, whose voices also appear in the oral histories. Some sitters appear with assistive technologies but are not defined by them. Davey’s portraits question what is a healthy or a ‘normal’ body, highlight how medicine shapes, impacts and intersects with the lives of individuals and perceptions of normality, and provoke reflection about the existing collections.