Captive Imagesexamines the laws treatment of photographic evidence and uses it to investigate the relationship between law, image and fantasy. Based around the scholarly examination of a bank robbery, in which a surveillance camera captures the robbery in progress, Katherine Biber draws upon critical writing from psychoanalysis, postcolonialism, art, law, literature and feminism to 'read' this crime, its texts and its images.
The result is an interdisciplinary study of crime that unfolds a compelling narrative about race relations, national identity and fear.
This book is an essential read for all levels of law students studying, or interested in, law, criminology and cultural studies.
1. The Hooded Bandit 2. The National Bank 3. The Epidermal Examination 4. The Mothers Trouble 5. The Danger Zone 6. The Spectre 7. Your Fantasy, My Crime
'... a refreshingly original intervention in the field of criminology, in terms both of the material upon which it draws and the style of its analysis.
... an engaging commentary on the judicial use of the photograph in a culture in which racialized tensions structure the collective. And what may at first sight appear to be a somewhat esoteric enterprise quickly turns out to be acutely pertinent, as the author stages her discussion against the background of late modernity and its heavy reliance on visual modalities of crime control.
... [Captive Images] offers a unique theorization of laws relation to the image. As such, the book sits well with recent developments in cultural criminology, and with the resurgence of interest in the image in socio-legal studies... Captive Images has the unquestionable merit of introducing a series of references unfamiliar to criminology, and of doing so in an accessible manner.' - British Journal of Criminology, vollҬ