Traces of violence: Representing the atrocities of war

This article explores the relationships between war and representation through the use of visual images, and takes a cue from the French cultural theorist Paul Virilio, who has written extensively on the militarization of vision in ways that have yet to be fully recognized in criminology. It then outlines some of the disputes surrounding documentary photography, not least since one of the main factors driving the development of the medium was the desire to record warfare, before turning to recent efforts to reconfigure the violence of representation by focusing on what has been termed ‘aftermath photography’, where practitioners deliberately adopt an anti-reportage position, slowing down the image-making process and arriving well after the decisive moment. This more contemplative strategy challenges the oversimplification of much photojournalism and the article concludes by reflecting on how military-turned-consumer technologies are structuring our everyday lives in more and more pervasive ways

Cold heaven Don McCullin on AIDS in Africa

Photographs displayed in an exhibition held at the Whitechapel Gallery from 25 May to 10 June 2001SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:m01/22952 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Medical archives and digital culture

When BioShock was released in August 2007, reviewers praised the moral complexities of the narrative and the game’s dystopian vision of what Ayn Rand dubbed the “virtue of selfishness.” What critics overlooked was the extent to which the disturbingly realistic artwork and musical score relied on found images and sound, including a recording of distressed breathing from a physician’s website, and digitized First World War medical photographs of soldiers with facial injuries. This article examines the implications of these acts of appropriation from a range of critical perspectives including Susan Sontag’s commentary on the representation of suffering; recent literature on the ethics of computer games; and an online discussion forum in which players of BioShock discuss the moral “grey areas” of the game