1. While, from a practical perspective, crime scene photography is meant to preserve the
scene exactly as it was found, for me there is always sense of morbid fascination. I am fascinated
by the victim, their life and what happened in their lives that made them a victim; I am fascinated
by the killer, and their life, and what circumstances drove them to commit murder, and I am
fascinated by the photographer and their responsibility to portray the scene for the police, for the
judges and juries, and for the families of the victims and the perpetrators. I agree with Wendy
Lasser when she suggests that we view murder as theater. I think that it goes further than that
however.
During the summer of 1999, a classmate of mine was murdered by another classmate. We
were all going into our junior year and I had known both of them for 6 or 7 years. I remember
when the news came on and the news reporters showed a photograph of a body lying in the
middle of the road, her torso and legs were lying on top of the yellow line, running parallel to it
as it vanished around the corner of the darkened, country roadway. Her arms were perpendicular
and she made a cross, right there in the center of the road.
The crime scene photographer worked at my high school. He had taught both the victim
and I in an introductory photography class the semester before. I knew the victim because we
had worked on a few projects together in various classes but we never saw each other outside
school. The murderer was well-known as a bully and I spent most of my time avoiding his
presence completely. My teacher developed his crime scene photos in the darkroom at school; he
was closer to the victim than I was, she was his niece. I came into the classroom while he was
developing the film; I had no idea that they were related. He told me that when he received the

2. call for the scene, the police didn’t know who the girl was. He arrived and instantly recognized
her.
I spoke with him about this experience. He said that when he took the photos he was
aware of two things: the need to document the scene accurately, completely and realistically, and
to protect his brother and his wife, the parents. He said this was a hard line to balance because he
knew that she would be identified by her family from the photos that he took.
In the end, the police did not arrest the killer, even though the entire town knows that he
did it. We don’t know why the police neglected to arrest him as they even said they had evidence
that he had, at the very least, raped her before she died. This much was revealed in the press
coverage of the event. Every time it was mentioned by the newspaper or on the television I
always thought back to my teacher, responsible for communicating not just the evidentiary
importance of the crime scene, but also responsible for documenting the death of his niece. My
teacher still works as a part-time crime scene photographer for the police department. When I go
home we still get coffee together. We often talk about art, and my life away from Maine, but we
rarely mention his class, his photography, or his niece. Recently the case was re-opened and
subject to a renewed interest because it remains unsolved. I found myself thinking about what
my teacher must have felt like taking the photographs of his murdered niece during the night, in
the middle of the darkened road.
Crime scene photography shows an intimate part of the lives of at least three people: the
victim, the murderer, and the photographer. Crime scene photos are like showing the scene once
removed. A fascinating aspect of crime scene photography is that sense of removal. The
photographer chooses how best to display the murder weapon, the scene of the crime, the victim.

3. In doing so, they are acting as a sort of curator of crime in the same way that a theater production
is curated by the director.
Victims might be the most fascinating part of crime scene photography because of what
they show of the victim, especially when these things have absolutely nothing to do with the
crime itself. In most cases this is true of the murders that happen in the victims home. The
trinkets and books on the shelf, dirty dishes in the sink or laundry on the floor. I always find
myself wondering if the person was naturally messy, if they had just finished a meal and hadn’t
cleaned it up yet or if they just left the dishes until they had enough to justify washing. I scan the
bookshelves for the titles I recognize in the photo and what I think that represents about the
victim. What did the victim do that was so bad to justify being murdered? What was it about
their lives that made them a target? Was it revenge? Was it for money? Was it jealousy?
In this way the photos are also a glimpse into the life of the killer and I find myself
asking the same kinds of questions of the killer. I think about what made that person so
passionate that they saw no other way to solve their problem than to eliminate the victim
completely. I also wonder why the photographer chose certain things about the photo, like
staging or lighting. I understand the intent of a crime scene photo is to replicate the scene as best
as can be done. I understand the intent is to show the layout of relevant objects, like the murder
weapon, the furniture, where the victim fell but I always wonder about the perspective of the
camera, the lighting and whether it is natural or artificial, how the viewing of the scene changed
the photographer.
Murder is terrifying because it is the ultimate end to a conflict, whatever that conflict is.
Documenting the scene is required for the police to make a strong case against the perpetrator.

4. This is particularly true if the killer is unknown. The photos are shown to the judge, to the jury,
to witnesses of the crime. The photographs are shown to survivors, family members or friends to
identify the victim. Especially here I always find myself wondering what that must be like.
Murder is terrifying because it is a terribly intimate experience. I stare at crime scene photos
sometimes and wonder at the passion and the intensity of emotions that must have been present
for someone to think that another person deserved to be killed.
Crime scene photography mediates the intensity of the emotion of the moment. It allows
the audience to view an intimate moment while also removing the shock of that moment. The
mediation of the moment allows the viewer to critically evaluate the scene in a way that is not
possible when viewing it in person. The mediation is vitally important for both the understanding
and dissemination of the photographs and the scenes they display. When Wendy Lasser writes
that viewing a murder as theater “is to remove some of the terrifying randomness of it,” I think
she is only explaining half of the story. I think there is an inherent need in everyone to minimize
a terrifying situation and part of the role of crime scene photography not just to document the
scene but to document the scene in a way that removes the terror from the murder. Murder is
terrifying because it can happen to anyone, so making the murder into a form of theater becomes
a coping mechanism for understanding it, and the situational factors leading to it, more palatable.
I think this is why I am fascinated by murder and murder scenes; it is the human ability to
make it into a theater event and to minimize the terror of the event. I stared at the photos that
Weejee took and I kept finding myself wondering what he was thinking of when he was shooting
those scenes. I realized that it didn’t matter to me whether he staged the scenes he shot or not
because I realized that he must have been equally fascinated by the crimes as I was. He was

5. living in a time when there wasn’t instant access to crime scenes, or in-depth television shows
with expert analysis by people who had studied murder and crime for decades. So I think for him
the fascinating part was trying to understand why the murders happened. I think he shared my
morbid fascination with trying to understand the process within a person that thinks murder is
justified.