From the loft

Sometimes when looking at one of the many intriguing mug-shot photographs in the museum’s forensic photography collection, it is a detail off to the left or right of the main subject, an accidental or spontaneous happening that has unexpectedly entered the frame which grabs your attention. In Camera Lucida cultural theorist Roland Barthes named this phenomenon the ‘punctum’ … a part of the image that is not the intended focus but which nonetheless ‘impacts on’, ‘reverberates with’, ‘pierces’ or ‘wounds’ the viewer. In this photograph it is the casual stance of the detective who has strayed unaware into the focal plane of the camera.

The detective hovers, head bowed, absorbed in the act of winding his fob watch, a step or two distant from the middle-aged offender. The detective’s overt concern with the small ticking mechanism in his hand has a serendipitous, fateful symbolism. Photography is all about ‘time capture’, and being arrested and charged for a crime, leads to ‘doing time’. For M.E. Baker, the photo’s intended subject, physical liberty is perhaps about to be exchanged for the ‘slowed time’ of the prison cell. The casual watch-winding presence of the detective, guardian of law, calibrator of time, suggests all that now hangs in the balance for the rather wan, and weary looking M.E. Baker.