Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Murder Case Photographs- #10, A 1950's Homicide Dick

Three posts constituting one. Seems fitting. For context, this was the first of the three posts, also August 22, 2006. And we're gonna take Luther's descendants, Hitler and Trump, off the header for a little while and put up the Wittenberg Predella painting.























This photograph, originally published as #3 in this series, is odd and because of its oddity, humorous. There are four human beings in the photograph and it is apparent who the dead one is. For one of the living to be directing our attention to him by pointing from three feet away is comically superfluous.

There's also an odd look to the three detectives as a separate component of the picture. They don't seem to go together as part of a single scene. It's almost like they were cut and pasted from three different contexts. One absurdly points at a corpse three feet away. He looks angry. Maybe he lost a bet? Crime scene personel will often point to draw the viewer's attention to something that is not obvious like a bullet hole or spot of blood. Not a corpse. A friend "read" the Pointer as demonstrating perhaps the angle of the gunshot and how far away the barrel of the gun was. A light went on but on close examination that can't be what is going on. The pointer doesn't have an imaginary gun in his hand. You have to put the thumb up to make a gun. Conclusively though if Det Pointer was trying to demonstrate the bullet's trajectory he fucked up. Drawing an imaginary line from the end of his finger the bullet misses the victim entirely.

The taller detective behind Det. Pointer seems disconnected in every way from the rest of the scene. He is wearing sunglasses indoors. Ok, some people wear sunglasses indoors to be cool. Fine. But Shades also stands slightly apart from his partners, casually has his hands in his pockets and looks directly at the camera, seemingly oblivious to the others and, like, the corpse five feet away.

The detective to the Pointer's right has a tie on unlike the other two. Maybe that's over analyzing. At least he's lookng at the corpse and seems part of the scene but he looks like he's going to cry or throw up. Very un-homicide detective-like.

No comments: