“We never, never talked about photography”

This chapter argues that the photodocumentary tradition has as much to teach criminologists about method as it does about photography and photographs; its lessons are as much methodological as they are visual. Visual criminology holds the potential to push criminology beyond method – beyond, that is, method as an exteriorized abstraction grounded in totalizing ontologies and objectivist epistemologies. Drawing on the photodocumentary tradition, a vibrant visual criminology can help criminology as a whole overcome its clumsy compartmentalization and mechanization of methodology, and can move criminology toward a more sensual integration of method, subject, and situation. In so doing, this sort of visual criminology can also reintroduce the methodological modesty that characterized the early Chicago School, and can remind criminologists of their discipline's own meandering methodological heritage. A heritage is the one that is today all too often forgotten amidst the welter of surveys, statistical analysis, and big data.