Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

Media coverage of institutional child abuse, particularly in the Catholic Church, has often used buildings such as churches and orphanages as visual reference. In many cases, trauma becomes manifest in images of these buildings and their associated Catholic iconography, such as the crucifix. These institutions are represented through the aesthetic of containment and fear, elements that point towards transgressions being committed under the pretense of protection. Some of the visual tropes adopted in media representations of the Catholic Church within this context include intentional parallax and keystone distortion; “dutch angles” that exclude points of dispersal; environmental cues such as dark clouds, heavy shadows, bare trees and physical decay; and composite images of individuals superimposed over buildings. These tropes aim to activate a pre-existing sense of horror which touches on notions of unheimlich. This paper argues that the representation of the institution as a site of evil follows, in part, the tradition of the horror house in cinema and art but is also informed by other factors, specifically within the context of reportage in areas like the caption and headline, and distortion as ‘special effect’. Such representations also resonate with the architectural notion of facadism: the disconnect between pre-existing ideas of horror intended for immediate public consumption and the slow grind of memory and affect that follow the lived experience of institutional abuse victims. The paper also discusses the repurposing of some of these buildings and how images can be an integral part of the “detoxification” process.