Images of fatal violence: negotiating the dark heart of death research

Abstract

This article explores the criminological contours of using pictures of and about fatal violence in the research process: defined here as encountering them, using them as research data and reproducing them in academic research. It argues that where the wider methodological literature has been quiet on the issue of researching crime’s images, cultural criminologists, security scholars, art historians and others are debating issues around the cultural value of such sensitive pictures and, in so doing, they consequently highlight core methodological concerns with encountering and drawing on depictions of or about fatal violence, such as murder, in the research context. In addition, the paper argues that these core methodological concerns for contemporary scholars are often borne out in the work of some artists who use crime’s pictures, subject and content matter to make art. Their art practice reveals an approach to crime’s images and artefacts that is particularly productive for criminologists, with the latter’s concerns about justice, violence and harm.

Keywords:

• Crime
• death
• sensitive images
• art
• aesthetics
• visual criminology

Acknowledgements

The author is immensely grateful to Erica Borgstrom and Julie Ellis, editors of this special issue, for all their generous assistance. I also sincerely thank the anonymous referees for their close readings of the paper and for their helpful suggestions.

Notes

1. See http://www.hht.net.au/discover/highlights/insites/city_of_shadows and accompanying blog: http://blogs.hht.net.au/cityofshadows/tag/peter-doyle/.

2. Suburban Noir (November 2013–April 2014) Museum of Sydney: http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/exhibitions/suburban-noir.

3. Gibson and Richards have installed the interactive art environment ‘Bystander’ twice in Sydney (2007) Carriageworks, Redfern; (2009) Justice and Police Museum – the home of the NSW Police Forensic Photography Archive. Bystander is part of the Life After Wartime suite of works using images from the archive. See http://www.lifeafterwartime.com/. Gibson also published a book: Gibson (2008).

4. See also the New York’s MET Museum’s 2016 exhibition: Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play, http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2016/crime-stories, which featured on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter via the hashtags #CrimeStories and #MetOnPaper100.

5. See for example, Antonio Olmos ‘Murder #19, Ramnit Chander, Southall’ Landscape of Murder Blog 27 March 2013 at http://thelandscapeofmurder.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/murder-19-ramnit-chander-southall/; Antonio Olmos ‘Murder #2, Fiza Asif, Walthamstow’ Landscape of Murder Blog 17 October 2012 at http://thelandscapeofmurder.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/26/; Antonio Olmos ‘Murder #9, Igor Vinogradov, Forest Gate’ Landscape of Murder Blog 17 January 2013 at http://thelandscapeofmurder.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/murder-9-igor-vinogradov-forest-gate/.

6. See http://abunodisceomnes.wellcomecollection.org/.