But how do we know? — “CSI” and beliefs
about visual evidence.
• A different CSI Effect — what are the modes of thought used in
relation to visual evidence, and how might they interact with
attributes of the CSI program?
• A theoretical musing, totally free of empirical evidence, and filled
with many and diverse speculations.
The photographs, and the question
• (Here begins what may appear to be a diversion away from the
topic, but stay with me: this is about mind-sets in understanding
evidence.)
• Roger Fenton was an early (mid-19thC) British photographer,
known best for his travel pictures from exotic locations (e.g. China)
and his war photographs from the Crimea.
• Attached (embedded) to British Army in 1855 during Siege of
Sevastopol. Main task to take photographs that showed war in a
good light.
• On April 23, 1855 he ventured up into the “Valley of the Shadow
of Death” (not the location of the Charge of the Light Brigade —
named for the frequency of Russian cannonballs ending up in it).
Location for the photographs
•
But how do we know? — “CSI” and beliefs
about visual evidence.
• Fenton and his assistant , Marcus Sparling arrived at the Valley at
around 3pm, and made two exposures from the same tripod
position:
The Photographs: “on”…
•
…and “off.”
•
But how do we know? — “CSI” and beliefs
about visual evidence.
• I’ll refer to them as ON and OFF (cannonballs ON road,
cannonballs OFF road) as so as not to bias the question about them
that is the subject of the investigation described here.
• Both have been published, but “ON” more frequently than “OFF;”
thereby hangs this tale.
• Errol Morris, eminent documentary film maker, became interested
in the question of why/how the two versions existed, and in the
confidence expressed by some writers on history and photography,
about the two photographs.
• (Full story is told in Morris’s three-part series in the NYT, starting
at: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-camefirst-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/
More about the photographs
• In Susan Sontag’s last book, Regarding the Pain of Others,: “Not
surprisingly many of the canonical images of early war photography
turn out to … have had their subjects tampered with … in the first
version of the celebrated photo he was to call ‘The Valley of the
Shadow of Death’ … the cannonballs are thick on the ground to the
left of the road, but before taking the second picture – the one that
is always reproduced – he oversaw the scattering of the cannonballs
on the road itself.” [italics added]
• Morris’s reaction to this: How did Sontag claim to know which
photo was made first, and that he “oversaw” placing the balls on
the road?
• Set out to answer the questions: which photograph was made first
— and how do we know?
(A self-contained microcosm)
• Between them, these two photographs are:
• The crime (or the misdemeanour); they cannot both be ‘found,’
unmanipulated photographs;
• the scene of the crime (or a representation of it), and
• the evidence (almost all of it).
Who’s on first?
• Morris questioned Sontag’s source, a book about the visual history of the
Crimean War by Ulrich Keller, who had written:
• “The first variant obviously represents the road to the trenches in the state
in which the photographer found it … In a second version … Some round-shot
is now … distributed all over the road surface – as if the balls had just been
hurled there, exposing the photographer to a hail of fire. Not content with
the peaceful state of things recorded in the first picture, Fenton obviously
rearranged the evidence … to create a sense of drama and danger that had
originally been absent...” [emphasis added]
• …and who says, in conversation with Morris:
• “Well, I can see a motivation for him to take the balls out of the ditch and
put them in the middle of the road. That makes sense to me. It’s something
that I think is plausible for someone to do. The other way around, I don’t
know why anyone would do that. I don’t think it’s likely. “
• MORRIS:” Is it the absence of a psychological explanation that makes “the
other way around” unlikely or implausible?”
• KELLER: “Yes.”
Top-down and bottom-up
• In Keller, we see (?) one mode of reasoning that is also used in
relation to crime: construction of a psychological theory of
motivation, which is ‘backfilled’ with suitable material evidence,
consistent with the theory. This is the “Top-down” approach.
• A model frequently used in crime TV, where we see character
motivation before we see a crime.
• Keller/Sontag model of Fenton, as someone who exaggerated
risks, may be unfair. Cannonballs were fired into the valley while
they were there (Fenton’s letters), and his assistant Sparling feared
for his life. They had to move the camera back from an initial
position because of the incoming cannonballs.
Morris’s search continued
• (A long story, and you should read the whole, but):
•Morris consults other experts, with variable results:
• Gordon Baldwin (Getty): the balls were harvested by soldiers, to
fire back;
• Malcolm Daniel from MOMA — agrees with this.
• An earlier letter from Fenton (April 4), following a reconnaissance
of the same area, indicates that the road had been ‘covered’ with
balls at that earlier time — and thus that the “on” photograph was
an attempt to represent that earlier condition.
• Note that these are largely character defences of Fenton, based on
presumed intentions of the photographs.
•The quest for an authoritative witness is futile — Morris looks for
answer within the photograph.
The search within
• Morris attempts to determine the direction in which Fenton’s
camera faced, so as to read any changes in shadows/sun direction.
Inconclusive — some experts are certain camera faced north, some
south.
• Consults experts who superimpose one photo over the other to
see where the balls on the road have been taken to, or where they
have been taken from. Position doesn’t indicate timing.
• The sky in both photographs is washed out because of the
emulsion’s over-sensitivity to blue; though one photograph is
mostly clear sky, the other cloudy-bright, they look the same.
• Shadows, esp. long ones, are almost entirely absent. Shadows of
the balls are inconclusive; because one photo is cloudy-bright sky, it
shows diffuse highlights on the balls where the other has specular
highlights, foiling a direct comparison.
The search without
• Morris does not give up easily…
• He goes to the Crimea, and finds the Valley of The Shadow Of Death (which had
not been done before):
Search and Create
• Morris borrows a cannonball from the Panorama Museum, and
takes it to the site and photographs it, with camera pointing in the
right direction, at the right time of day:
Shadowland
• …and calls in new experts to assist with reading shadows:
• R. BOUWMEESTER & ASSOCIATES
Sun & Shadow Position Specialists
with Modeling Applications in
Accident and Crime Scene Reconstruction,
Urban Development, Site Planning and Building Design
• And also: Fovea Pro – a forensic photography program for processing and
measuring images.
• Neither is helpful (contrast differences, uncertainty about whether laterafternoon light would make a hillside brighter or darker, etc etc)
• (During this process there are two reversals of opinion by the experts about
whether ON or OFF comes first.)
• The issue is finally resolved by information within the photographs, but not
related to any of these issues…
Some rocks and a hard place
• Detail from OFF:
•
Some rocks and a hard place
• Detail from ON:
•
Some rocks and a hard place
• Superimposition:
•
All of which means…?
• Firstly, if a verdict (on or off) was the dependent variable here,
then both the ‘over-arching character-motivation theory’ approach,
and the bottom-up nitty-gritty evidence approach have led to the
same conclusion. ‘Verdict’ not a helpful measure.
• So, we need to be very interested in how and why decisions are
arrived at, not just what decisions are arrived at.
• But what else? Morris (et al’s) search seems to tease out some of
the cognitive dispositions that might be present in a juror’s mind
when considering the meaning of visual evidence. Maybe it’s
possible to tease out more.
• It seems potentially — heuristically — useful to compare these
cognitive dispositions in Morris (et al’s) search with the attributes of
CSI that distinguish it even within TV crime shows.
CSI
• (from: Panse, Silke: ‘The Bullets Confirm the Story Told by the Potato’ Materials without
Motives in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In Michael Allen (Ed) Reading CSI: Crime TV
Under the Microscope. London, I.B. Tauris & Co, 2007, 153-166.)
• First crime series to reject a plot driven by psychological motivation, in favour
of accumulation of empirical evidence (153)
• Much of plot is driven by images rather than words (153)
• Evidence is not transparent — must be revealed through technology (fingerprint
machine, DNA, UV light)
• Close focus on science of materials, rather than character construction;
• Objects, not subjects, tell stories (Grissom, talking to person but referring to
corpse: “you don’t have to talk to us. He’ll talk to us;” and “The bullets confirm
the story told by the potato.”
• Dealing with objects is portrayed as rational, talking to people as irrational.
• Cases are more like jigsaw puzzles or riddles than motive-driven character
narratives.
Cognitive styles in the tale of two photos
• We’ve seen that some of the experts in photography use inferential arguments
about personality/character, rather than attributes of the photograph, as the
default means of arguing for a certain meaning. In fact most people mentioned in
the Fenton photograph story do this, at some stage. (CSI: never used).
• We can see contrasting views of meaning: meaning ‘within’ the evidence;
meaning ‘discursively constructed from’ the evidence; meaning conferred from
outside [some of] the evidence. (CSI concentrates on the first of these).
•The truth/meaning of visual evidence may indeed be located ‘within’ the image
itself, but some contextualising is almost always essential. (CSI: a machine will
extract/reveal meaning for us).
• Grateful to Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel for pointing out how the
notions of ‘top-downers’ and ‘bottom-uppers’ interact here. It may appear that
CSI inclines viewers toward bottom-up approaches, — but I suspect CSI
enthusiasts’ enjoyment of the show comes from the tension between their topdown tendencies and the show’s bottom-up revelations.
Ideas for more research
• Two other things play into this (and confirm need for further research):
• Jane Goodman-Delahunty has shown that keen CSI viewers are simultaneously:
• Less knowledgeable about forensic science techniques;
• More confident about their knowledge, and
• Less educable (about forensic science).
• This appears to confirm the likelihood that rather than understanding in detail,
they form an overall hypothesis (top-down), and wait to see it confirmed or
denied by the revelations of CSI technology.
• The notion of a generalized CSI effect is a misunderstanding of media effects
generally, caused (alas) by media effects research.
• Advertising (for example) works — but not because everybody is slightly
influenced by it. Some people are influenced by it because their interests
coincide with it in some fashion, but the eventual result is a complex— and
unpredictable(?) — mix of attributes of the show and cognitive attributes of the
viewer.
• So it is, probably, with CSI.