Oscar G. Mason - Bellevue Photographic Department

Bellevue Photographic Department

The Bellevue Photographic Department was the first of its kind in a civilian hospital. Earlier photographic commissions could be found attached to American military hospitals that cared for wounded Union soldiers during the Civil War, but these precedents came under the authority and pay of the Army Medical Museum founded by Surgeon General Dr. William Hammond in 1862. In France, Dr. Montméja (1841-?) at Hôpital Saint-Louis was photographing for Dr. Alfred Hardy's (1811–1893) atlas of skin diseases but it was not until 1869, when he and Dr. Jules Rengade (1841-?) announced plans for the construction of "un magnifique atelier de photographie" that would serve the hospitals of Paris. The first photographic lab in a German hospital did not appear until 1893 at the Leipzig Medical Clinic.

In 1868 after a year of planning, construction was completed on a department of photography within the former residents quarters of Cook House on Bellevue hospital grounds. Alterations included a 12 by 14 foot skylight and a partitioned space within the laboratory, presumably for a dark room, that measured 6 by 12. Financial oversight was the responsibility of apothecary John Frey and he published the first two reports for the department. All subsequent reports were written by O. G. Mason and sometimes co-signed by Frey. From its inception, photographic production at Bellevue was ambitious and over 1200 positive paper prints were made in 1869. Frey reported the success of the department with these words:

Of the positive paper prints... they have been of such a character as to already attract the attention of the medical profession, not only in our immediate vicinity, but at a distance, and have called forth many expressions of interest and commendation. Members of the medical profession begin to visit the Department periodically, for the purpose of obtaining such photographs as pertain to each one's more especial class of investigation. Many interesting cases of skin disease, factures, and results of important surgical operations have been fully illustrated by series of photographs, which give opportunity for comparison and study not offered by any other means.

O. G. Mason's duties included photographing deceased unknowns, a service that was pioneered at Bellevue in 1867. Bodies were received in a new facility constructed in 1866, modelled and named after the much larger Paris Morgue. Photographing took place outside and in his report for 1875 Mason petitioned for accommodations that would protect his equipment and subject from inclement weather. Unidentified bodies were displayed up to seventy-two hours on stone tables behind a curtain wall of iron and glass dividing the 20 by 20 foot space. Both photograph and body were numbered correspondingly and any unclaimed bodies were later buried at the Hart Island City Cemetery. Mason's annual reports emphasized the importance of this work and the relief it provided to the bereft who visited the morgue in search of missing loved ones.