The bled ones:

Biopolitical framings and scenes of interpellation in photographs from the Rockefeller Collection

Abstract

The article examines photographs produced by the Rockefeller Foundation
during health campaigns in Brazil (1930s–1940s), focusing on images of the
“bled ones.” This qualitative, archival study identifies them not merely as
technical records but as scenes of interpellation that reveal agency, astuteness
and self-fashioning of those portrayed. The methodology combines social
history, visual analysis, and theoretical approaches from Judith Butler,
Saidiya Hartman, Tina Campt, and Jacques Rancière. The discussion
shows how these images, although inscribed in a biopolitical logic, display
resistances and gestures that escape sanitary control. Results indicate that
such photographs establish alternative scenes of appearance, enabling
critical readings of the relationship between power, body, and visuality. The
conclusion is that, even under coercion, subjectivities emerge that displace
the exemplary function of the archive and open gaps for fabulations and
alternative histories of epidemics.