Sometime between the fall of 1895 and the spring of 1896, Anna Moon Randolph, a first-year medical student at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP), had her portrait taken seated beside the skinless arm and brainless head of a cadaver (Figure 13.1).

Before the shutter clicked, Randolph raised her scalpel, then her sights, and met the gaze of her photographer. This was no ordinary camera man, being neither a professional photographer nor, for that matter, a man. Instead, the tall, thin, dark-haired photographer standing eight feet from her, clothed in the shadows of the dissecting room and a floor-length dress, was none other than her classmate, WMCP second-year, and student amateur photographer, Alice Evans.

In her hands she held a camera unlike any Randolph had ever seen before: a brand-new No. 2 Kodak box camera. It required no tripod or plate holder. Not even a bellows. From where she sat, Randolph could not even see a lens. To the casual observer, Evans appeared to simply be standing there, holding a plain oblong black box.