Lecture recording: Our Friend the Sun - Images of Light

Dr. Tania Anne Woloshyn of the Department of Art History & Communication Studies, McGill University, opened the Osler Library’s latest exhibition by discussing the visual culture of Heliotherapy, an ancient practice of total bodily exposure to sunlight, and Phototherapy, an electric light therapy pioneered in the 1890s.  How heliotherapeutic and phototherapeutic practices were disseminated and popularized within the history and visual culture of light therapeutics during the early twentieth century will be explored using illustrated texts and objects from the Osler Library’s collection – so too will themes of pleasure and discomfort, ancient and modern, and the natural and artificial.

Click here to view the recording of the lecture (recording date: Jan 24, 2011)