Retinal remains: photographs, autopsies and the propaganda of fear

Millette, Holly-Gale (2016) Retinal remains: photographs, autopsies and the propaganda of fear. Captivating Criminalities Conference : Crime Ficion, Felony, Fear and Forensics, Corsham Manor, Bath Spa University, Bath, United Kingdom. 25 - 27 Jun 2016.

Abstract

This paper critical interprets the illustrations and forensic photographs taken during the Whitechapel Murders in 1888. In the main, these were leaked autopsy photos of the white working-class women found murdered in the streets of Whitechapel Ward in the Autumn of that year. Photography as a forensic tool was in its nascence and detectives – grasping at straws – believed that the visage of the murderer might remain reflected in the retinas of the victims. It pays particular attention to two current critiques that tend to address two different kinds of photographs (and in so doing to constitute them as distinct genres): a Foucauldian account of photography as a form of disciplining surveillance, and a Lacanian – influenced analysis of photography as a disruptive reminder of absence and death.

To the first account, I will discuss how the images served to confine and boundary a Whitechapel space that had hitherto been a liberal matrilocal working-class community. Simultaneously, the images reinforced the separate sphere mentality of urban dwellers elsewhere in the city and called the ‘Angel to the Hearth’ in middle class homes citywide. Following Rose (1997: 277 – 300) in this construct, it is seen that it was not the slum dwellers who feared the photography, but the urban dwellers who did – especially when it was connected to detective photography. Secondly, and building on the work done by Smith (2004), I discuss the psychoanalytical side of the photography as a disruptive – often violent – tool that maps mercurial images of present absence. I will argue that the images reproduce, and sometimes challenge, regressive visions of working class femininities and I suggest that through their spatial and corporeal organisation these images conjure a radically uncertain femininity in a space that was in the process of being overwritten by moral and societal concerns with unpatrolled public space.

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Contributors

Author: Holly-Gale Millette

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