Brain images are believed to be physical explanations for cognitive phenomena. However, the persuasive power of brain imaging cannot be fully explained by the general tendency to biologise the mind in contemporary cognitive sciences. It needs to be understood in relation to histories of imaging techniques, of mediated forms and of their social and cultural discourses.

This essay investigates forensic fiction as a trend in televised crime fiction and argues that this trend or subgenre is particularly interesting if we are to understand how surveillance is portrayed in contemporary society. The essay looks particularly into an extremely popular example of forensic fiction, namely CSI and its two spin-offs CSI: NY and CSI: Miami. Through a discussion of the conceptions of knowledge, crime and power, which seem to come forth in the three CSI series, the present article argues that the particular blend of technological optimism, positivism and moralism that can be witnessed in forensic fiction in general, and in CSI in particular, is important to understanding how popular culture lends a certain normalization of surveillance to everyday life.

When ICAO approved a new standard for international passports, they recommended including a high-resolution facial image on a chip in addition to the visual portrait on the identity page. Accordingly, there is, in a certain sense, two images in the current passport, one on the chip, the other visually displayed. In this article I relate the functional distribution between these two images to the nineteenth-century mugshot and argue that the photographically generated images in the current passport represent a subdued tension between two parallel paths in the history of photography: depiction and measurement. By looking at the arguments for facial recognition technologies in today's passport as specified by ICAO, I argue that the current regulation of international mobility downplays the importance of physical measurements and hides this behind photography’s more familiar function, namely depiction. This contributes to conceal biometrics as a tool for power and control in today’s society.

Retracing my route to media aesthetics.

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