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.