TALK: The Perfect Crime: Rodney King &
the Politics of Photomechanical Representation
Lucia Ricciardelli (Ph.D. Candidate in the
Department of History of Art and Architecture)
Thursday, January 27 / 4:00 PM / Free
IHC Research Seminar Room, 6056 HSSB, 6th floor

In the early 1990s, academic debates on the evidential power of photography became an important issue in mainstream America, particularly as a consequence of the Rodney King trial. In exploiting the instability of meaning in George Holliday’s videotape, the attorneys working on the case publicly demonstrated that the camera could not be considered an “objective” witness. This presentation regarding the Rodney King case will address the problematic nature of photography and film as evidentiary tools. Specifically, it will examine the ways in which George Holliday’s videotape was used in the trial by both the defense and the prosecution to support diametrically opposed arguments, thus showing that a photographic record’s meaning changes when it is ripped out of its original historical context and inserted into new ones.
Presented by the IHC’s Visual Cultures Research Focus Group.

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