Idea of a Germ: Health Poster Art

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WITH IMAGES RANGING from microscopically enhanced microbes to come-hither syphilitics, "An Iconography of Contagion: 20th-Century Health Posters and the Visual Representation of Infectious Disease" may be the sickest show in town. Michael Sappol culled 20-odd graphics from the vast holdings of the National Library of Medicine to tell the story of the communiques that brought medicine to the masses. Before moving to the National Academy of Sciences' C Street NW building in the fall, the exhibition remains on view by appointment for a couple of weeks at the Keck Center.

» EXPRESS: The World War II-era VD posters demonize women. Why?
» SAPPOL: Part of that reflects a kind of larger social misogyny. VD is a difficult disease for people to deal with because it deals with sexuality in a society which doesn't really like to have public discussion of sexuality.

» EXPRESS: What was the target audience in this case?
» SAPPOL: These posters in particular are aimed at men. They're done by male artists, they are intended to mobilize men to take measures to deal with venereal disease, so they're saying, "Men, watch out for women." These posters are not put in places where women are likely to see them. They're put into health clinics for men or military bases.

» EXPRESS: There's a TB poster that foregrounds a happy nuclear family against teeming crowds above the message, "Discover the Unknown Spreaders!" Is the idea to encourage universal testing or xenophobia?
» SAPPOL: I think all of the above. There's a lot of mixed messages in these posters. This is a [circa] 1940 poster, when the weight of American life had shifted. In the 1920s and '30s, for the first time, there were more Americans living in cities than living in the countryside. ... There's this sense that these are large, unhygienic cities of poor people who are prey to tuberculosis and likely to spread tuberculosis.

» EXPRESS: How did the rhetoric of posters change with the advent of AIDS?
» SAPPOL: Here, the people who are leading the campaigns are the people who are in the gay community who said, "Look, Ronald Reagan's the president. He's ignoring AIDS. This is a total emergency. Everyone we know is dying or getting sick, and we have to lead the campaign." And they make the posters. They don't go to advertising professionals to make the posters.

» EXPRESS: And yet official public health campaigns often mimic ad campaigns. Where do the similarities end?
» SAPPOL: An ad campaign ... works great for selling soap. One out of every 100 people buy the bar of soap — you got a very salable product. One out of every 100 people does something about AIDS — doesn't do the trick.

» National Academies' Keck Center, 500 Fifth St. NW; through Aug. 15; call 202-334-2415 for an appointment. (Judiciary Square/Gallery Place)

Written by Glenn Dixon
Photos courtesy Michael Sappol