Thermal optimum: time, intimacy and the elemental in the first thousand days of life

Abstract

“Thermal Optimum” is a collaboration between photographer Nicholas Eppel and anthropologist Fiona C. Ross. Focusing on pregnancy and early childhood, we sought a way to open questions about how the “hard facts” of biology are given force and presence through “soft” actions of care. Thermographic imaging, initially developed for military use, allows one to trace a subject’s “heat signature,” making visible aspects of the world that are ordinarily undetectable to the human eye. The resultant images disrupt visual expectations and accustomed modes of interpretation. An experiment in seeing, we are interested in thinking about what these kinds of images enable and unseat for us, an artist and an anthropologist.