CRIME SCENES | A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE
In spring 2016 the Nederlands Fotomuseum will be presenting the exhibition Crime Scenes | A Hundred Years of Photographic Evidence.
Can a photo show or reveal something or serve as evidence? Since the invention of photography, the camera has been viewed mainly as a mechanical device for depicting reality. What one sees in a photograph has always been as it is. Is what one sees in a photo always ‘true’ however? Photos can also provide a subjective view of reality and they can be manipulated or staged. The exhibition Crime Scenes is the first show to give viewers an insight into the fascinating way that the medium has been used in legal cases over the past 100 years and the discussions that have been held over the role of photography in them.
Crime Scenes presents eleven case studies from the history of the ‘photograph as a piece of evidence’, with emphasis on issues of major humanitarian importance and/or international law: from the late 19th century until the present day. Starting with the notorious crime scene photos of the French police photographer Alphonse Bertillion, and continuing with the aerial photographs of bombed cities during the first world war and the films of the concentration camps used in the Nuremberg trials of the Nazis, the exhibition ends with the debate around the evidence for drone raids in Waziristan and the attempts to show that the Bedouins in the Negev desert were previously not simply nomads, with the aim of supporting their claim to have a right to live there to this day. The exhibition will bring together a great variety of historical visual material. In each of the cases the background will be lucidly set out.
