literal sense. They include projects as diverse as Joel Meyerowitz’s docu-
mentation of Ground Zero in New York; Paul Seawright’s and Simon
Norfolk’s images of the traces of war in Afghanistan; Robert Polidori’s
records of the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans;
and Sophie Ristelhueber’s images of the sabotaged Kuwaiti oilfields in
1991. In all of these examples photography has re-engaged its forensic
function, although none of these photographers makes images that
resemble police pictures. Instead, forensic attention to traces is spliced 45
30 Simon Norfolk, ‘Bullet scarred outdoor
cinema at the Palace of Culture in the
Karte Char district of Kabul’, 2002, from
the seriesChronotopia.