Camera Clues

A Handbook for Photographic Investigation

Joe Nickell

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780813138282
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Forensic Science
• Index: Law

In Camera Clues, Joe Nickell shares his methods of identifying and dating old photos and demonstrates how to distinguish originals from copies and fakes. Particularly intriguing are his discussions of camera tricks, darkroom manipulations, retouching techniques, and uses of computer technology to deceive the eye. Camera Clues concludes with a look at allegedly "paranormal" photography, from nineteenth-century "spirit photographs" to UFO snapshots.

 

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INTRODUCTION

Photography, evolving from tentative experiments beginning about the turn of the nineteenth century, became commonplace by mid-century, and—with the introduction of the Brownie camera in 1900—it became widely popular: Practically anyone could “capture” anything at any time on film. Now, with millions of photographic images being made annually, photography has invaded virtually every area of human activity.¹

With this proliferation of photos have come attendant mysteries—questions raised about the date when or conditions under which a given photo was made, about its subject matter or other concerns. Many are historical questions: Could this be a rare portrait of Abraham Lincoln? Who are the people in these old family photographs? When was this “view” of a certain town made? Does this represent an honest historical document, or was the depicted scene staged? What about this old picture: is it an original or a copy, one made perhaps many years later? Are there clues as to when and where this daguerreotype was taken? And so on and on.

Other questions may be more scientific in nature: Has this picture been retouched? Does that crime-scene photograph distort distances and thus create a false impression? Can particular features in a photo be enhanced? Is it possible to photograph a certain document in such a way as to reveal obliterated writing? Is this photo of a “UFO” really proof of alien visitation? Could that photo of a “ghost” actually result from a double exposure? And what about this strange picture: is the odd image some defect of camera or film?

This book attempts to provide answers to such questions, representing a wide-ranging study of photography from an investigative standpoint. On the one hand, I discuss the use of photography in investigative work; on the other, I show how investigative methods are applied to photographs themselves. Appropriate discussions of early photographic processes and other developments and techniques are given. To avoid unnecessarily complicating the text, however, I occasionally refer the readers to a specialized article or textbook for a more in-depth study. Extensive notes, an annotated bibliography at the end of each chapter, and an appendix on the chronology and identification of photos are also intended to help accomplish this goal and to make the text more useful.

Throughout, I also cite numerous case studies not only for their entertainment value but also for the light they shed on how photographic mysteries arise and how investigative strategies may be devised to solve them. Such strategies apply to photographs that may have been deliberately intended to deceive as well as to ordinary snapshots or professional photographs that—through the vagaries of time or circumstance—have inadvertently raised questions or become the subject of controversy. Because of the controversy surrounding many sensational photographs—for instance, those alleged to depict American prisoners of war still being held in Vietnam or Cambodia or pictures of the Loch Ness Monster—it is appropriate to discuss briefly some rules of evidence and procedure.

First of all, one should keep in mind the maxim that the burden of proof is always upon the advocate of an idea—that is, in a court of law the plaintiff, or, elsewhere, whoever is the asserter of a fact or the one who advances some hypothesis. A skeptic does not have to prove something is not so, the difficulty of proving a negative being well known. Consider, for example, trying to prove there are no leprechauns in Ireland: whatever contrary evidence you amass, someone can always insist your approach has been inadequate.²

One should keep in mind, too, the maxim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”—that is, that proof should be commensurate with the degree of remarkableness of the claim being made. For instance, someone entering your home or office with a dripping umbrella and announcing that it is raining outside is naturally accorded more credibility than someone producing an instant-camera snapshot of a flying saucer that is alleged to have just flown by.³

Another useful principle is known as “Occam’s razor” or “the maxim of parsimony.” It is often invoked in cases in which more than one hypothesis can account for the known facts. Occam’s razor holds that the simplest tenable explanation—that is, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions—is most likely to be correct and is, consequently, to be preferred.⁴

These are only a few general guidelines. More specific rules of evidence and standards of proof may need to be applied depending on the circumstances in a given case. A family historian taking a photo of an ancestor’s gravestone, for example, is not expected to follow all the guidelines of providing documentation and establishing the chain of evidence that would be required of a forensic expert taking a photograph of a bloodstain at the scene of a homicide.

I point this out because I am hopeful that the book’s broad scope will make it useful to a wide variety of potential readers: genealogists and family researchers; historians, biographers, and other scholars; reporters; police and private detectives, as well as insurance adjusters and attorneys; scientists; photographers, photo archivists, and collectors of photographs; and, indeed, all who encounter photos in their private or professional lives—in a word, everyone!

Given my background—a patchwork of experience in a number of professional fields—I have long seen the need for such a book as this, one that pulls together information from rather scattered sources and places it in a useful context. At last, however, resigned to producing the book myself, I find I am able to draw on my diverse background for illustrative cases and insights. As a former professional stage magician, for example, I have learned much about the art of illusion and the uncovering of deception. Other relevant work has included stints as a private investigator (as an operative for an internationally known detective agency), a historic-document specialist (and author of Pen, Ink, and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector, and Document Detective⁵), a museologist, and—not to exhaust the list—as a newspaper “stringer” and historical columnist.

In short, I have faced many of the kinds of photo mysteries that readers are themselves likely to have encountered. Though it has not been possible to anticipate every kind of mystery and offer a ready solution, there are certainly many procedures and techniques that point the way.

Recommended Works

Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell. Missing Pieces: How To Investigate Ghosts, UFOs, Psychics and Other Mysteries. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992. Comprehensive investigators’ manual, with extended discussions of investigatory tactics and techniques, rules of evidence, and related subjects.

Coe, Brian. The Birth of Photography: The Story of the Formative Years, 1800-1900. London: Spring Books, 1989. Highly readable, well-illustrated text on photography’s most formative period.

Winks, Robin W, ed. The Historian as Detective. New York: Harper and Row, 1969. A textbook for the historical investigator, featuring essays on evidence and case studies of many historical mysteries, including the Kennedy assassination.

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THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The Development of the Photographic Process

Ever since prehistoric times—when cave dwellers painted likenesses of animals they hunted on the walls of caves such as the Altamira caverns in Spain¹—people have sought to make images of the world around them. Later developments such as the landscape paintings beautifully rendered on silk by ancient Chinese artists² or portrait art (developed by the Egyptians and Romans and introduced, in the West, at the beginning of the Renaissance³) continued the tradition.

The growth of the middle class in the eighteenth century created a demand for artistic likenesses of people that were less expensive than the oil portraits commissioned by wealthy patrons. Miniature paintings satisfied the demand to an extent, but it was largely the silhouette—traced and filled in in black ink from a shadow cast by a lamp, or cut freehand from black paper by an artist using small, long-handled scissors—that first captured the mass market.⁴ Named for Etienne de Silhouette, a French minister of finance who was an amateur profile artist, these shadow portraits were at first one-of-a-kind originals (see Figure 2.1) until another Frenchman, Gilles Louis Chretien, invented in 1786 a multiple-image-making device called the Physionotrace.⁵ This apparatus was similar to a draftsman’s pantograph, and to the device Thomas Jefferson used to make instantaneous copies of letters he was writing.⁶ When a pointer was traced over the lamp-cast profile, a system of levers caused an engraving tool to reproduce the outline on a copper plate. Details of features and costumes could be added, and the plate could then be inked and printed to make many duplicate images. Soon artists and inventors began to speculate about optical devices that might produce images directly.⁷

Such an optical device—the camera obscura—was known in ancient times, but there was then no means of permanently recording the transient image. As Leonardo da Vinci described the camera obscura in his notebooks: “When the images of illuminated objects pass through a small round hole into a very dark room … you will see on the paper all those objects in their natural shapes and colours. They will be reduced in size, and upside down, owing to the intersection of the rays at the aperture.”⁸

Figure 2.1. Traced silhouettes were forerunners of later photographic technique that also used to record an image. (From an 1898 text, Magic: Stage Illusions and scientific Diversions, Includeing Trick Photography.)

Various portable models of the camera obscura were developed, and in 1589 Giovanni Battista della Porta published a note on the advantage of using a lens instead of a small hole. About 1665 Robert Boyle constructed a box-type model that could be extended or shortened, like a telescope, so that the image could be focused onto a paper placed across the back of the box directly opposite the lens. While scientists used the camera obscura for solar observations, artists adapted the device (using a mirror to correct the left-right reversal of the image) as an aid in drawing, since they could easily trace the projected image.⁹

About 1800, the first experiments in attempting to “fix” camera obscura images were made in England by Thomas Wedgwood. He sought to copy paintings made on glass onto sheets of paper treated with silver nitrate. As demonstrated by C.W. Scheele in 1777, such silver compounds darken by the action of light. The great chemist Sir Humphry Davy wrote of his friend Wedgwood’s experiments: “When the shadow of any figure is thrown upon the prepared surface, the part concealed by it remains white, and the other parts speedily become dark.” With the painting on glass, “the rays transmitted through the differently painted surfaces produce distinct tints of brown or black, sensibly differing in intensity according to the shades of the picture.” Unfortunately, the resulting images were impermanent, and—due to their light sensitivity—could only be viewed by candlelight. Moreover, as Davy wrote, “the images formed by means of a camera obscura, have been found to be too faint to produce, in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate of silver.”¹⁰

It remained for the Frenchman Joseph Nicephore Niepce to produce the first permanent images made by the direct action of light. An amateur scientist and artist who was interested in the new printmaking technique of lithography but who was not very skilled at drawing, Niepce sought ways of transferring images directly onto the printing plate. He...