Exercise: Donald Weber, Interrogations.

Exercise: Donald Weber, Interrogations.

Having read the brief summary by Simon Bainbridge of Weber’s work in the Ukraine I sourced more pictures from an article by Jim Casper on The Interrogation Room.  Weber said, of this work, that he was not trying to show bad Policemen but a bad system where such treatment of suspects is allowed.  If the interrogators believed they were doing nothing wrong then why aren’t they visible in the images?  What we see is bemused, frightened and in some cases defiant people who will, no doubt, confess their sins.  What do we see of the interrogators?  Was Weber told not to show their faces or was this a means of heightening the feeling of threat?  

By not showing the Police as people but merely tools of the state they are dehumanised to a degree greater than their suspects.  These are powerful images made more powerful by the absence of the interrogators.  All one sees is the occasional arm cuffing an ear or holding a gun to a suspects head.  

Whether Weber was told not to show the interrogators or he chose to exclude them is of little consequence, but the effect of their absence makes one concentrate on the unfortunate suspects even more and adds to the general horror of the scenes.