Visions of (Tuberculosis) Control: Medical Photographs in Mau Mau–Era Kenya

summary: The 1950s were a decade of remarkable advances in tuberculosis research globally, with Kenya emerging as a key site for developing new control and treatment regimens. Yet historical source material and consequently medical histories are largely silent on the context of anticolonial war in which this work took place. This article argues that disease control efforts in postwar Kenya must be examined in the context of the Mau Mau uprising and uses photographs to probe the intersection of politics and health. Examining photographs of late colonial TB control initiatives, it highlights the stark contrast between these images and the concurrent realities and imageries of Mau Mau. Produced in contexts of omnipresent violence and deep uncertainty about Kenya’s future, these medical photographs were instruments of colonial power and Western hegemony. Even as they reproduced a generic developmentalist vision of medical knowledge production, the specificities of Kenya’s late colonial struggle reverberate throughout these images.