Crime Scenery in Postwar Film and Photography

292 Pages·2019·6.867 MB·English

by  Henrik Gustafsson

CRIME
S CENERY
IN POSTWAR
FILM AND
PHOTOGR APHY
Henrik Gustafsson
Crime Scenery in Postwar Film and Photography
Henrik Gustafsson
Crime Scenery
in Postwar Film
and Photography
Henrik Gustafsson
The Arctic University of Norway
Tromsø, Norway
ISBN 978-3-030-04866-2 ISBN 978-3-030-04867-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04867-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018966684
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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Cover image: Sarah Vanagt, ‘Dust Breeding’ (2013)
Cover design by Oscar Spigolon
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For Alfi and Elvis
A
cknowledgements
According to John Constable, landscape is an artform that aspires to
make something out of nothing. While the present study may be said to
adhere to this credo, since it is concerned with scenes that on a cursory
glance appear to have very little to offer, the project has not evolved out
of nothing, but from a mass of notes, drafts and outlines amassed over
the last decade. This material originates from my postdoctoral fellowship
with Nomadikon: New Ecologies of the Image, an interdisciplinary research
centre for the visual arts directed by Professor Absjørn Grønstad at the
University of Bergen. I owe a debt of gratitude, first of all, to my friends
and colleagues in this group and its vast network of collaborators, and to
all those who, in one capacity or another, have contributed with inspira-
tion, conversations or opportunities of various kinds. Too many to men-
tion, I want here to extend my thanks in particular to Mark Ledbetter,
Jennifer Swanson, Lars Sætre, Øyvind Vågnes, and James S. Williams.
The material gathered during my time in Bergen began to assume the
contours of a realizable project in the fall of 2013 when I relocated to
the University of Tromsø. First as a researcher with the group Border
Culture, directed by Johan Schimanski and Stephen Wolfe, and later
as part of the permanent staff of Media and Documentation Science.
Among my colleagues in Tromsø, I am especially thankful for the friend-
ship and support of Holger Pøtzsch, Andrei Rogatchevski, and Roswitha
Skare, and to the staff at the Culture and Social Sciences Library for
graciously putting up with my endless requests.
vii
viii ACkNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply grateful to all the exceptional artists who have generously
granted permission to reproduce their work and provided the illustra-
tions, many of whom went well beyond the call of courtesy to commu-
nicate on this and other matters. Sincere thanks to Yair Barak, Mikael
Levin, Simon Norfolk and Jamie Marshall at Simon Norfolk Studio,
Sophie Ristelhueber and kari Astrup at BONO, and to the Department
of Language and Culture at the University of Tromsø for financial sup-
port when needed. I want to extend a special thanks to Daniel Eisenberg
and Sarah Vanagt, not only for providing me with copies of their films
as well as illustrations, but also for graciously taking time to correspond
with me and sharing invaluable insights into their work. During the last
years of preparing the manuscript, I had a particular image in mind as
the official “face” for this project, and I want to thank Sarah Vanagt who
without hesitation gave permission to use this still from her film Dust
Breeding as the book’s cover.
It has been a pleasure to collaborate with Lina Aboujieb and Ellie
Freedman at Palgrave Macmillan, who have been exemplary in all regards
throughout the various stages of the process. I also want to thank the
two anonymous readers of my book proposal and the clearance reviewer
of the full manuscript draft for their careful readings and insightful com-
ments, as well as their enthusiasm for the project.
Sections from two chapters have previously appeared in published
form. A preliminary version of Chapter 5 was included in the anthol-
ogy Exploring Text, Media, and Memory, edited by Lars Sætre, Patrizia
Lombardo and Sara Tanderup Linkis (Aarhus University Press 2017).
While substantially revised and expanded, this chapter has benefitted
from the conscientious comments I received from Anders M. Gullestad
and Ragnhild Evang Reinton, and the copy-edits of Mia Gaudren.
Some sections from my article “The Cut and the Continuum: Sophie
Ristelhueber’s Anatomical Atlas,” published in History of Photography
(Vol. 40 No. 1 2016 © Taylor & Francis, available online: https://www.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03087298.2015.1103458), have
been developed and reframed for Chapter 3. These paragraphs therefore
retain the improvements gained from the commentary of the journal edi-
tor Luke Gartlan and the two anonymous peer-reviewers. I would like to
thank the publishers for granting me permission to draw on this body of
material.
ACkNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
The opportunity to write this book would never have presented itself
without the fortuitous interventions of two persons. First, Professor
Astrid Söderberg Widding, who long ago encouraged me to pursue a
Ph.D. in Cinema Studies at Stockholm University, and second, the afore-
mentioned Asbjørn Grønstad, without whom I doubt I would have been
able to continue this line of work. Moreover, if I had not crossed paths
with Asbjørn, I would never have met Julie. For this, I am more grateful
than I am for any of the above.

Tromsø Henrik Gustafsson
December 2018
c
ontents
1 Imperfect Crimes 1
2 From Dreamwork to Earthwork 43
3 Intruders in the Dust 89
4 A Murder of Crows 143
5 Persistence of Vision 183
6 The Testimony of Trees 221
Index 267
xi
l f
ist of igures
Fig. 1.1 Nicolas Poussin Et in Arcadia ego (also known
as The Arcadian Shepherds 1637–1638) (Source Alamy) xvi
Fig. 1.2 Roger Fenton The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855)
(Source the Library of Congress) 13
Fig. 1.3 Simon Norfolk “The North Gate of Baghdad (After Corot)”
from Scenes from a Liberated Baghdad (2003). Courtesy
of the artist 15
Fig. 2.1 Simon Norfolk Israel-Palestine: Mnemosyne (2003). Courtesy
of the artist 59
Fig. 2.2 Yair Barak Earth Works #6 (The dark cliff). Archival pigment
print, 105/105 cm, 2004. Courtesy of the artist 75
Fig. 2.3 Yair Barak Earth Works #4 (The stones valley). Archival
pigment print, 105/105 cm, 2004. Courtesy of the artist 76
Fig. 3.1 Sophie Ristelhueber, WB #7 (2005) © Sophie Ristelhueber /
BONO, Oslo 2018. Color photograph, silver print mounted
on aluminum 90
Fig. 3.2 Sophie Ristelhueber, Fait #20 (Aftermath, 1992) © Sophie
Ristelhueber / BONO, Oslo 2018. Color photograph,
aluminum silver print on laminated paper with golden
polished frame 98
xiii