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5 INVESTIGATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY Ofthe various sciences and skills applied in modern investigative work, that ofphotography is one ofthe most important, not only in forensic cases but also in historical, archaeological, art, and other investigations. For example, just as photography is used in police work to record evidence at a crime scene or help detect erasures on an altered check, the historian may use it to document and illustrate historical personages and places or to study the writing on an old manuscript. Similarly, the archaeologist might employ photography at a "dig" to record an artifact in its exact position before removing it, or as an aid in reconstructing missing portions of an Egyptian fresco painting, or even in conducting aerial surveys of ancient fortifications. The art specialist might examine a "medieval" triptych with X-ray photography to detect the presence of modern nails, or use infrared photographs to discover a painter's undersketching technique, or simply use ordinary photos to provide an accurate visual description of artworks so they can be sought after a theft. Similar investigatory work may be carried out in other fields as well. Although this chapter focuses primarily on forensic matters (with occasional discussions of concerns in the other sciences and in the humanities), by extension the various procedures and techniques may be suitably adapted to many other investigative purposes. As we shall see, photography's capacity for documenting evidence and its potential in actually uncovering some types ofevidence make it an indispensable tool for any detective. Photographing Evidence Because various factors-film, exposure time, filters, developers, and so forth-can affect the accuracy with which a photograph depicts its subject, a police-science text states: INVESTIGATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY 99 All of these considerations point to the need for police photographers who are highly skilled in their field and who have a thorough understanding of cameras, lenses, light-sensitive materials, processing chemicals and the like. In the final analysis, however, "police photography" is not a branch of photography which requires extensive training; any skilled professional photographer or advanced amateur can do police photography work once he has been instructed in its special requirements. In fact, amateur photographers often know as much about it as the "pros" and are distinguished from them only in that their equipment is probably less costly and photography is not their occupation.! The following discussion of photographing evidence is divided into crime-scene photographs, photography of physical evidence, and photomacrography and photomicrography. Crime-scene photographs. In police work, second in importance only to identification photos (treated in the previous chapter) is that class of pictures known as crime-scene photographs. According to a police-science text: "Photographs of this type include any picture taken at or about the scene of a criminal offense, such as murder, burglary, robbery, etc. Very similar in nature, although they cannot be called true crime scene photographs, are those taken at traffic accidents or of bodies in the morgue." 2 All such photographs may simply be termed "investigative photographs ." 3 According to the textbook Scientific Police Investigation: The extensive use of photographs of crime scenes permits one to present, in pictorial form, all of the facts and physical circumstances of a case; it aids in preserving available evidence; it permits the consideration ofcertain types ofevidence that because of their size or form cannot be brought into court easily; it permits reconstruction of past events at some later date; and generally it assists in accurately revealing the conditions prevailing at a past event. In addition, a good photographic record also reveals physical evidence that might otherwise be easily overlooked and constitutes an excellent refresher for the investigator when he must testify in court about some event that happened months earlier.~ As an illustration of many of these points, a "suicide" I was commissioned to reinvestigate for a bereaved family was most likely an accident based in part on a study of the crime-scene photographs. The deceased was found dead in his apartment, lying at the foot ofthe stairs. He had been shot through the head, the bullet traversing the skull at a steeply downward angle but entering the wall, about mid-point ofthe stairway, at a sharply upward angle. Blood spatters recorded in the several color photographs enabled a forensic bloodpattern analyst to reconstruct the victim's position when he was shot, a position consistent with his having fallen headfirst down the stairs. In addition, the photographs yielded clues that had previously been overlooked, such as one of the...

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