"Everything happens at night"
An interview with photographer Theo Wenner about his new book, "Homicide"
the true crime that's worth your time
I don’t know that I’m qualified to review what’s functionally an art book — I can’t draw a stick figure — but it’s a change of pace, at least, so let’s go with it. Theo Wenner’s Homicide, which documents his time embedded with NYPD’s Brooklyn North homicide unit, comes out June 7 from Rizzoli, and I really enjoyed spending time with it. It has a sort of cumulative effect, like an exhibit (…as it were), and the photos create conversations — between themselves; among themselves, Weegee, the “great” 20th-century headlines of the tabs, Law & Order, Naked City, and all of New York’s ideas about itself.
Wenner sat for an interview with me yesterday, and we talked about the Heisenberg principle, a vintage solitary-death documentary, the sound city lights make, and more. — SDB
The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.
Sarah D. Bunting: I did want to ask about how you decided that embedding with Brooklyn North homicide was what you wanted to do for this project. Can you just talk a little bit about that?
Theo Wenner: Um, well, I really wanted to photograph homicide detectives, you know, and have for a very, very long time, and I'm really just interested in the subculture of it. And just in that very specific world that you really kind of don't get to see, except for, you know, in movies and old photographs. I mean, just seeing them now in color, you know, what is that world that you've seen for so long, in culture, what does that actually look like now?
SDB: Right.
TW: I was able to photograph this unit, which happens to cover the most dangerous area of New York. So they see the most homicides out of any detective unit in New York and they put the best homicide detectives in this area because it, it is the busiest.
SDB: Right. So tell me a little bit about how you made that happen. Because a lot of the press materials that I got initially talking about this book have been saying, you know, this is the first time in the history of NYPD, that this has been allowed to happen. And that this particular division has been documented. How did that come about; how did you manage to pull that off?
TW: It, it honestly, it took years. I didn't even know where to begin obviously. And, uh, I wrote letters asking if I could do it. I didn't even get a no; I got no response. So it took almost a year to even get rejected.
SDB: [laughs] Right.
TW: And then, um, I got rejected and then I think a year after that, I finally managed to get someone from their press division, which is called DCPI. I finally managed to get someone on the phone just to explain what I wanted to do and kind of pitch the project. So that was a big step forward, is just actually getting to speak to somebody.
And we had a conversation and I sort of explained what I wanted to do. They were very hesitant and we managed to kind of work out, uh, very specific parameters, what they would let me do. For what kind of publication — they had a very specific thing that they would say yes or no to.
SDB: Sure.
TW: So I took that opportunity, whatever I could get, you know, the very sort of specific “yes” I got from them, I just took, knowing that I, you know, from there could maybe like gain more substantial access — and then exactly that, like over a year of doing this small version of the project, I gained people's trust and so on and so forth. And then finally, it's a cliché to say, but you build their trust and then they let you in more and more. And finally they let me be with them everywhere and see everything. And it was — there's no rules anymore and because no one had ever done this, there was no precedent. So that was also the really interesting part, there was no “you can do this” or “you can't do that.” It was just like, “Okay.”
SDB: Well, once you did get access, you've already said a little bit about, like, the adjustment process and sort of, the more you do it, the more you were allowed to do —initially, were you trying to disappear and let let the cops forget you were there? Or was there an unavoidable, Heisenberg-effect thing. And did that become part of your narrative slash composition?
TW: That's a great question. I think naturally at first people are, are aware of the camera and you being there; that's unavoidable. The more time you spend with somebody, the more you're just talking, you know, sitting there doing nothing they're, you know, checking their [phone], whatever they're doing. You kind of forget, and then you just start acting naturally, and then you disappear.
So I like to think that, yeah, I was a fly on the wall, and kind of like they didn't notice or they got used to it where it just was normalized. I was in the background.
SDB: How long did that take — or were you not really tracking it in that way?
TW: It's hard to — I don't know. I guess just, you know, after being with them for a couple of weeks, it really, it felt like they were kind of like looking past me, you know, like were not noticing me at all.
SDB: Right. And that's what you wanted, that's what you were going for.
TW: Oh, absolutely.
SDB: In terms of the, the crime scenes that you were at, what was your experience? How did your experience of those evolve? Were you initially at a distance from them and then less, was it the reverse, were you trying to stay distanced from them or not?
TW: Well, I didn't know what I was going to think because, to be honest, I'd never seen a dead body before — so I really had no idea how, what it was gonna be like, walking into [it]. I mean, we've all seen it on TV a million times, but what does it actually feel like when you walk into a room and you see a dead body in a horrible crime scene? I have no idea what to expect. I was very nervous.
By being next to [the detectives], when they walk in, you really, their demeanor really does set a tone — I don't know, I guess their calm, their calmness and how professional they are really does set a tone and make it, it puts your own anxiety at ease, so to speak. You, just because they're acting a certain way, you act subconsciously act a certain way — so I think being next to them was, uh, made it less kind of shocking, less scary. Does that make sense?
SDB: Yeah, absolutely. That sort of — I don't know if you're familiar with this documentary from, I think it's almost 20 years old now. It's called A Certain Kind Of Death. And it follows coroners and medical examiners in Los Angeles — basically, the various people who are in attendance when someone who lives alone and has no next of kin and possibly not even ID, dies in Los Angeles and what, like, physically becomes of them.
I found myself thinking about that when I was going through your photos, because there was a, there was sort of a tone that was set [by the documentary] in terms of like, you know, this is just part of life and the fabric of the city. And the way that it's being mediated sort of calms the viewer a little bit, for lack of a better term.
That sort of boomerangs us into the work slash creative part of my questions list. I am reading this in a PDF, which maybe not ideal, but, um, they have the photos in an order, and then at the end there are smaller versions of the photos with captions. and having gone through it a time or two more, I think I almost prefer not to know the details of what I'm seeing and fill the story in myself. Do you have a preference for how that's taken in by readers?
TW: I prefer that you fill in the details yourself. I mean, that's me answering that question as a photographer.
SDB: And they don't seem like they're in chronological order, but I didn't verify that because again, I sort of preferred the way I had it in my mind.
TW: I feel — it's in a loose chronological order, you know, just to drive it forward, but it's not strictly in chronological order.
SDB: As you were sort of gathering these photos over the course of this project, what composition or visual motifs were becoming apparent and how much did that dictate how the photos are ordered currently in the book?
TW: Well, I started realizing that everything happens at night —
SDB: Right?
TW: [laughs] Yeah. As most murders do — when was with them, I think maybe nine out of ten murders happened at night. So most of the book is shot at nighttime — that's, that's when it all happens. That's a visual motif. And I don't know, you start seeing a lot of things. Like there was a lot of hallways. A lot of murders happen in hallways, [which] actually surprised me. Huh. In a lot of the buildings where their murders took place while I was with them, I guess the hallways don't have cameras and people know that. So a lot of murders happen on hallways.
SDB: Ah, sure. Okay.
TW: And you spent a lot of time driving around with them, in these kind of unmarked, whatever they are — Ford, you know, I don't know what the model is, but it's just kind of that unmarked generic black Ford —
SDB: Yeah. It used to be a Crown Vic and now I don't know.
TW: Yeah, exactly. Whatever the new version of the Crown Vic is. So you're kind of seeing these perspectives over and over again, whether it's through a car window, a hallway, nighttime, you know — you just start passing the same things over and over, I guess that kind of frames the way you see it.
SDB: Yeah. I was thinking specifically of, um, windows, but also stairs —
TW: And stairs. Yeah.
SDB: Like, of course these are just going to be features of the subject matter. Any scene is like, you know, it's in a building and these are features of buildings, but also the way that these were liminal spaces that the police were also becoming features of. That was really cool to me. Really interesting. And also the lighting; granted, everything is happening at night, but there is a sort of garish video-camera quality to the lighting at times. Is that something that you were trying to do or play up or it was just kind of —
TW: Yeah. I mean, that's another element. I'm glad you noticed that. I mean, no, the lighting is — it's so specific. It's that sodium-temperature lighting. If you were there, it makes a buzzing noise.
SDB: Yep.
TW: Um, which you'll never forget. But that is everywhere.
SDB: There's one photo where it's like looking towards Manhattan from a rooftop scene and you can almost hear the buzzing; on, on the street below, it's still nighttime and those streetlights are still on, but then the sun is coming up, in Manhattan. Which looks beautiful and kind of clean. And I just stared at that photo for like five full minutes — I mean, liminal spaces are, like, my favorite thing to think about. And there were like twenty of them in that photo. So, um, well done.
Are there any of these photos that you particularly love? Like when it's all said and done? You’re maybe a little sick of them — I've written books before, and sometimes you're just like, eh, I can't, but do you have any photo or photos that you are particularly like, “I nailed it. This made it all worthwhile”?
TW: Favorites — I would say there's some images that I find particularly powerful, you know, just that you can't believe it when you see it. There's one photograph; it was at the homicide of a drug dealer, and it was in a street-level apartment, and we walked in, the detectives and I, and the front doormat was this kind of like cartoonish welcome mat with these cartoon footprints.
SDB: I remember the one.
TW: And then the detectives open the door and there's drops of red blood leading down this hallway — just the red blood spatter and then the, this red kind of cartoonish doormat, things like that where you just can't really make that up.
SDB: That one is definitely striking. And I'm also thinking of, there's one where two detectives are sort of, I think it was a quadruple homicide and they're just sort of taking a minute downstairs in a stairwell. And they're kind of on either side of an open door and then there's a couple windows and some stairs.
TW: Yeah, exactly. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
SDB: That it was just like, you know, here we are at the thinning of the veil, which was cool. … So I remembered that one and then — the teeny little cones marking, I guess, bullet casings —
TW: Yeah.
SDB: That it came right after a, like a more brutal subject. I don't remember exactly what, but to go from that previous photo to this little group of cones that looked sort of like, um, like a little flock of something cute. It was striking, the juxtaposition that, you know, it's like ducklings, but horrible orange ducklings. That mean someone died. So I thought that juxtaposition was, was really interesting.
I mean, this is what I hope for as a true-crime reviewer, is to get a piece of work that's not just the same, like, garbage-y rubbernecking —
TW: Rubbernecking, yeah. I really did editing, you know, you asked earlier about editing and I just really was aware of that specifically, the rubbernecking, and I didn't wanna make it gratuitously violent; I really chose my moments to sort of show or not show things. Less is more and, you know, you don't need to be explicit just for the sake of it.
SDB: …Are there any photos that you wish you had another crack at?
TW: I mean, all of them.
SDB: [laughs]
TW: But there is — they're documentations, but you always, looking back on it, you could have held the camera a little bit to the left, and put — you could always make it better, but that's irrelevant.
SDB: When did your time end with this unit? Was it because of COVID — had you planned to stay longer? Because it says 2020 in the materials, but it doesn't really say when, so —
TW: You know, there was no official — originally, when I first got this very limited, strict permission, there was this, like, “You have to be done by tomorrow, at like noon.” But by the end there was no limit. They just let me come whenever I wanted to. And they would actually call me when there was a homicide.
SDB: Oh, wow.
TW: Um, and it just — I had to cut myself off.
SDB: Right.
TW: Because I could have gone on for — it went on for a long time. And it could have easily kept on going because I — like, you just asked me, are there photos that you wish you could have — you always can make it better. And I was like, “This next one is the last time I'll go out with them. Like, I have to wrap this up, I know I have enough, already.” So to answer your question, I cut myself off.
SDB: Gotcha. So that's sort of related to my next question: would you iterate this project again, like with a different unit — like, I don't know, the art heist division? Or do you feel done with this particular world that you're trying to get behind the scenes of? Would you go in this direction again or not really?
TW: That's a good question. I, if anything I would want to photograph this, these same guys, maybe at a later date, but doing another division, no.
SDB: And what are you working on next? What are you working on right now?
TW: Can't say, yeah.
SDB: Oh, okay! Can’t, or won’t?
TW: [laughs] Either.
…Mysterious! Is Wenner embedded with…pirates this time? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see — or, if you’re local, you can ask him yourself. Wenner’s signing Homicide next Wednesday June 1 from 6-8 PM at Dashwood Books. LMK if you decide to drop in.
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