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Visual criminology. 1. Images as conduits for criminalization or accusation. 2. The criminalization of images, or: the image standing accused itself
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VISUAL CRIMINOLOGY
This emerging field of visual criminology is quite varied and many criminologists have their own ideas about what it should comprise. The state of the art overview volume edited by Brown and Carrabine (2017) illustrates the variety of ideas and themes in the field of visual criminology. The volume, in the field of legal visual culture, edited by Wagner and Sherwin (2014) provides us with even more illustra- tions. Some authors would include the analysis and study of visual media (film, theatre, television, the press, and so on), or social media. Others, such as the author of this chapter, are more interested in images themselves, that is, in that which is almost purely sensory in media exchanges. A Hollywood movie, for exam- ple, is, granted, largely visual, but in reality it is highly language-based; indeed, it is the result of highly structured, pre-planned, conceptual thinking and script- writing. They also include visual images though, and it is the images in films qua images that these authors would tend to focus on. It should be noted here that the nature of the study and analysis of images will depend on the type and the purpose of the images under consideration. This point is explored in more depth in the remainder of this chapter.
Images are often studied by visual criminologists as such, as images. But visual criminologists also use images during their very research activities. Indeed, images are often used as research tools in a variety of ways. We shall explore that point in the next section. Before we do that, we will say a little more about the study, by
visual criminologists, of images as such. In general, it may be safe to say that the field of visual criminology includes a number of areas or themes where the study of images could find a place. Let us list those by using artistic images as illustrations (the fol- lowing list is not exhaustive):
1. Images as conduits for criminalization or accusation
Images are sometimes made, used or otherwise mobilized, in order to accuse particu- lar groups, or to criminalize or otherwise censure particular behaviours and actions. Think of the painting by Goya, The Third of May 1808 (you should be able to find this painting, and any other images mentioned below, on the internet), which was painted during the Napoleonic Wars in Spain. One would have trouble to think of a painting that did a better job of accusing or indeed criminalizing brutal power. The theme is Napoleon Bonaparte’s siege of Madrid and its aftermath. But look at the colours. Look at the forms in this painting. On the right, you’ll see the machine-like force of the firing squad; on the left, the Christ-like features of the rebels.
2. The criminalization of images, or: the image standing accused itself
A number of years ago, the artist Andres Serrano made a photograph which he gave the title ‘Piss Christ’. The artist took a picture of a crucifix immersed in what he claimed was his own urine. This picture caused quite a stir and the artist was accused, among other things, of blasphemy. The artwork itself was vandalized on a number of occasions. Or take Marcus Harvey’s ‘Myra’, which he painted in 1995. Harvey used casts of an infant’s hand to daub the paint on the canvas, thus producing the face of Myra Hindley, one of the 1960s Moors murderers. This painting too was vandalized on a number of occasions. How to explain the almost obsessive reactions to such paintings? Which are the social and emotional chords that these paintings seem to strike? (On these artworks, see Young, 2000. )
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3. The spatial travel of images deemed ‘deviant’
Think of graffiti art. Recently, a number of ‘bigger than life’ graffiti artworks myste- riously materialized in the heart of Brussels. One of them represented a woman masturbating. It appeared on one of the gables in the Avenue Louise, one of Brussels’ shopping streets. The picture itself didn’t really shock the public. We seem to have arrived at a point in our consumer culture where shoppers in top-end shopping streets take such images in their stride. But the artwork could have been a clever comment on exactly the nature of contemporary consumerism. Graffiti tends to travel through urban spaces, colonizing some, and popping up unannounced in
others, as if the artists are trying to say (as they sometimes do using words) that they, and their desires, are uncontrollable, or ungovernable (Halsey and Young, 2006).
4. Images of spaces, and populations therein, deemed ‘deviant’
Do Google ‘Edward Hopper’. Click on his ‘Approaching a City’ painting. Hopper painted this in 1946. The city is looming darkly. The tunnel in front of us looks like what seems to be the gates of hell. The city itself is the ‘deviant’ space here. This probably tells us something about Hopper, or about others, whether artist or not, who think of big cities as Gotham-like dens of hellish vice. The work of British geog- rapher David Sibley (1995) on spaces of exclusion has been quite seminal in this area of study and research. Others, such as visual criminologists Keith Hayward and Majid Yar (2006), have researched and theorized how the visual appearance of par- ticular groups (e. g. the dress code of ‘chavs’) often exacerbates levels of contempt towards them.
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