ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief outline of the history of cameras in North American courtrooms, precisely because this history is intertwined with the history of producing courtroom sketches. The history of courtroom art is juxtaposed against, and even depends on, the history of photography in the courtroom. The following section details a dermatological, “sensuous” approach to the study of courtroom art in order to account for the tactile ways through which courtroom illustrators produce sketches with “artistic flash.” Finally, I bring a dermatological approach to bear on an analysis of courtroom art, emphasizing how reciprocal touching arises out of the handling of compositions as well as through the intimate act of drawing itself. As a whole, this chapter explores the ideological implications of emphasizing touch as a sensory mode for producing representations of law. For the most part, touch has been a neglected area of inquiry in the academic world, often appearing as a “medium for the production of meaningful acts, rather than as meaningful in itself.”1 Yet the meaning of courtroom sketch art cannot be divorced from the multiple and diverse acts of touching that are required to produce it.
