The images that I am recreating through memory were taken between 1945 and 2001. There were certainly significant changes in photography, technology and the way in which evidence was processed and presented from 1945 to 1990 and from 1990 to date.

Although the earliest images were taken in 1945 all the images were viewed by me between 1989 and 2001.

Although the use of photography in police work had been evolving since the 1800s, it was after world war two that saw a rise in its popularity along with other investigative techniques, due to the lack of manpower available. This would suggest that when the earliest of my images were taken it is likely that there was little in the way of a formal, structured and legal requirement in relation to the photographs as evidence. This was not far away, however, and as soon as 1948

“The best practices of forensic photography extended to include more types of cases, more stringent techniques, and the application of new technological advances. In 1948, Jack Augustus Radley, a forensic document examiner, published the first book solely on the topic of photography in crime detection, including material on microphotography and photography using ultraviolet radiation and infrared” 

The earliest images I am including in my project were initially processed from glass plates and were amazingly clear. They were in black and white but I am re-creating them in colour because my memory brings them back in colour. This has made me aware that my memory of any of the photographs is very likely to have been corrupted due to the time that has passed and my own experiences since. Perhaps these older ones are more likely to have included bias at the outset and as a consequence, how they are being remembered and the image that I now imagine and am recreating. Double bias in fact.

“As historical sources, crime scene photographs are constantly remade by the context of their viewing and the eye of the viewer; they remind us as historians that our own sight may perceive forensic truths on the surface but that we can never definitively fix and stabilize the shifting layers of affective meaning underneath”

By the 1980s things had moved on and

“police photography was used not only in the traditional evidentiary areas of fingerprints, prisoner photographs and copying services, scene of the crime photographs, and Ciné film but also increasingly in other departments such as Public Information, the Metropolitan Police and City Fraud Department, Hendon College, the Police Laboratory, Special Branch, C11 Criminal Intelligence, and Traffic Areas”

Current Forensic photography covers a wide variety of areas and requires an even wider variety of skills and education. As technology moved forward from the 60s onwards so did the options and the need for photography to be used in a far more evidential way. Images themselves have become a very large part of the evidence that may then go on to form part of a court trial. To this end, they must be processed and regarded no differently from other evidential material that is being put forward. The images I remember from 1989 through to the early 2000s will have been taken under more progressively strict procedures and protocols.

“Crime scene photography is a necessary and important part of the forensics toolkit. It plays an important role in fighting crime, but it is never free from bias”

Bibliography

Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-british-studies/article/crime-scene-photography-in-england-18951960/EB86EE008657D9CF63AFC6624D75198E
[Accessed 08/02/2023]

Available at: ttps://www.talkdeath.com/crime-scene-photography-complicated-history/
[Accessed 09/02/2023]