Marcus Harvey recreated the mugshot of Myra Hindley in 1995, a woman who murdered five children alongside her boyfriend Ian Brady between 1963-1965. The Myra painting (fig. 1) made its appearance...Show moreMarcus Harvey recreated the mugshot of Myra Hindley in 1995, a woman who murdered five children alongside her boyfriend Ian Brady between 1963-1965. The Myra painting (fig. 1) made its appearance in the Sensation Art Exhibition (1997) in London, where the public aggressively destroyed it. This research investigates how the artwork silences the visual punishment of the original mugshot. The Florentine Renaissance Pitture Infamanti facilitate a starting point to understand how punitive images operate and how society understood representations of criminals across centuries. Additionally, the research examines the contemporary genre of mugshots and more specifically the branding of Myra Hindley in the British media as the ‘other’ and the ‘evil’. Furthermore, the artistic qualities of Marcus Harvey’s painting are analysed and compared to the original photograph. The research finally argues that the “punitive gaze” of the mugshot relied on the finality and surveillance that the arrest of Hindley implied, while the painted handprints in the artwork that trace the figure of the murderer narrate the brutality of those crimes and silence her punishment.Show less
