If a Google images search is any reliable indicator, there are many ways to picture women's health in 2014. A search brings back smiling faces – women, but also men and children of different ages and races from various time periods. These people are in civvies, national costume and medical uniforms; they are sometimes by themselves, other times embracing another person or in some instances surrounded by children or professionals. Women lift weights, exercise and participate in charity runs. Some images show models or drawings of the inside of the human body – the reproductive system or blood cells. Ill health or disease is often implied: in one image, women hold up bras, presumably symbolizing healthy breasts either pre- or post-breast cancer. Women's Health magazine, created in 2005 to counterbalance the emphasis on men's bodies in Men's Health magazine (founded in 1987), makes several appearances, super buff female bodies gracing its covers. Sometimes there are no people in these images, just food, nature scenes, or graphs, charts or maps pointing to some issue relating to women's health and well-being. The names of clinics also appear, as do cheques representing money made to support them.

These varied images provide a useful introduction to our approach to picturing women's health; this collection broaches many ways of thinking about women's health that move beyond simple or typical notions of ‘representing’. A picture can be a ‘visual representation’, encompassing the graphs, charts and maps referenced above. In this sense, picturing also evokes ‘a representation as a work of art’, pointing to processes of creation and consumption.