"1. Plague-infected houses of Ferros Velhos (Largo do Correio), 2. House burned dues to plague, 3. Volunteer fire-fighters disinfecting the houses of the ilha do Leal, 4. A house in Alto do Viso, while burning, 5. Disinfection of contaminated house, 6. Disinfe

The third pandemic of plague (in its bubonic and pneumonic clinical forms) struck the globe between 1894 and 1959. As Yersinia pestis spread from country to country and from continent to continent, it left behind it not only a trail of death and devastation, but also a vast visual archive. It was the first time that plague would reach and establish itself in all inhabited continents. But it was also the first time that any epidemic would be photographed. As plague spread from harbour to harbour, and amongst cities, towns and villages, so did photographs of the pandemic through reproductions in the daily and illustrated press. Rather than forming a homogeneous or linear visual narrative, these photographic documents provided diverse perspectives on the pandemic, which, more often than not, were not simply different from region to region, but in fact conflicting within any single locus of infection. Moreover this photographic production came to establish a new field of vision, what we may call “epidemic photography” which continues to inform the way in which we see, depict and imagine epidemics and their social, economic, and political impact in the age of Global Health.

The arrival of plague in the Portuguese city of Porto (Oporto) signalled the first outbreak of the third plague pandemic in Europe. The outbreak attracted international attention, due to fears of a return of the Black Death in the continent. It also pitched local and national authorities as well as medical experts in heated arguments about the nature of the disease and the way to contain it.