The Cultural Afterlife of Visual Evidence

• In Event: Visualizing Crime, Policing and Evidence

Abstract

This presentation examines the cultural afterlife of criminal evidence. It explores what happens to criminal evidence after the conclusion of the criminal trial. Formally regarded as part of the court record, and subject to the rules of evidence within the trial, beyond the trial this material has aroused the interest of artists, publishers, historians, curators and journalists who wish to access and use this material for a wide range of purposes, some of which might be transgressive, dangerous or insensitive.

The presentation will show examples of criminal evidence now experiencing a cultural afterlife, including the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death created by Frances Glessner Lee, the criminal and coronial proceedings following the death of the infant Azaria Chamberlain, artworks, museum exhibitions, and fashion catalogues. The research that informs this paper draws upon the legal instruments associated with ‘open justice’, as well as institutional and cultural practices of ‘the archive’, and spectatorial practices of fascination and voyeurism. The paper asks what is at stake in opening these criminal archives, and what might be at stake if we try to regulate them.

Author

• Katherine Biber, University of Technology Sydney