Cameras and Voting Booths

The article examines how the constant proximity of one conjoined twin to another was consistently mapped onto different crises in non-disabled understandings of privacy in American culture 1850–1950 and how this, in turn, was used as a means of voter suppression against disabled people. It analyses both the commercialization of the Kodak camera in 1888 and the narrow 1884 presidential election, interrogating the governance of gazes directed at disabled bodies during this time, from those within the “vulgar” sideshow, the “educational” medical lecture, and the vaudeville performance. Through an examination of court transcripts, newspaper reports, promotional ephemera, and photography it becomes clear that during this period conjoinment was feared as an expression of compromised (non-disabled) privacy.