journal of visual culture
https://doi.org/10.1177/1470412918783841
journal of visual culture [journals.sagepub.com/home/vcu]
SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne)
Copyright © The Author(s), 2018. Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions
Vol 17(2): 207–222 DOI 10.1177/1470412918783841
Affective Architectures: Photographic Evidence and the
Evolution of Courtroom Visuality
Kelli Moore
783841VCU 0 0 10.1177/1470412918783841Journal of Visual CultureMoore
research-article 2018
Abstract
This article examines the courtroom situation, focusing on courtroom
spectatorship, architecture, and visuality in US trials. Visual evidence
is situated within the architectural apparatus of the courtroom to
examine how affect unfolds between a testifying witness and
courtroom audience members. The movement of photographic
evidence during judicial proceedings is linked to the disruption
of temporal and spatial equilibrium. The idea is introduced that a
feeling of vertigo is produced in the testifying witness and audience
participants. Following Sianne Ngai’s conception of the ‘minor affects’,
it is proposed that disconcertion and confusion are characteristics
of witness testimony and thus important political affects to note in
analyses of the relationship between vision and the discovery of
justice in legal spectatorship.
Keywords
chiasmus domestic violence legal spectatorship minor affects
photographic evidence proprioception vertigo
Introduction
In a 2016 themed issue of the journal of visual culture devoted to architecture,
editors Jae Emerling and Ronna Gardner propose that contemporary
architecture has failed to address ‘the full complex of issues engaged by visual
culture studies’ (Emerling and Gardner, 2016: 296). Martino Stierli (2016:
313, 314), in his contribution to this issue, considers ‘how a building serves
as an apparatus for the production and display of an image’, and places the