L I V E S


T


hough the term ‘biography’ (meaning ‘depiction of life’) was


not coined until the late seventeenth century, people have been making and sharing stories and portraits of themselves, or others, for millennia. Images of stick-like humans feature in Palaeolithic cave paintings; many cul- tures commemorate individuals through poems, songs and spoken sagas; and portraits of a kind feature on Egyptian sarcophagi, Greek busts and early coins from Asia Minor. In each case – as it would be for the painted or photographic portraits, ‘authorised’ or ‘unauthorised’ biographies, journals, diaries, tweets or selfi es that followed – the ‘truth’ they represent is uncertain. The purpose of most early biog-


raphies was, like a naturalistic portrait, to commemorate a venerable subject and chronicle their journey through life. It wasn’t until James Boswell’s warts-and-all portrayal of Samuel Johnson that revealing the intimate truth became the norm. The intimate truth of patients’ selves, however, has not always been as exposed as the lives of the doctors who treat them; medical case histories, after all, present a life story from a very specifi c perspective. When someone records or compiles


their own story, a new kind of truth emerges. Like the narrative that unfolds from Henry Wellcome’s extensive collection, or the shared insights in Montaigne’s Essais, the value in diaries or self-portraits comes not from their presentation of documentary evidence but from what they reveal about the creator’s character, emotions and self-image. Even a biased or twisted representation communicates something about the individual’s inner self. Auto- biographies present yet another tale, one that might challenge other accounts of the author, or be censored or manipu- lated by its subject.


The most brilliant exploits often tell us nothing of the virtues and vices of the men who


performed them...a chance remark or a joke may reveal far more of a man’s character than the mere feat of winning battles in which thousands fall… it is my task to dwell upon those actions which illuminate the workings of the


soul, and by this means to create a portrait of each man’s life.


Plutarch in The Life of Alexander, 1st century CE


Stitched drawings of elderly patients


Stitched drawing Glass and textile Georgie Meadows, 2011 RRa0053 / L0075749 Wellcome Images


Georgie Meadows’s stitched drawings of elderly patients, squeezed and preserved in jars like sterile museum specimens, question how individual experiences of ageing and dementia are commonly interpreted.


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