George Gibson, James Clifford, Charles Donnelly and Matthew Martin: All Held in Connection with the Killing of Edward McGuire

The faces of these individuals would have been repeated thousands of times in the printing of a newspaper. The men pictured are suspects in the killing of Edward McGuire in a gang feud in the early 20th century. This photograph serves as a physical record of a single image on the cusp of its own reproduction. The photograph as object reveals the many ways in which media is constructed for the purposes of its publishers and consumption by its audiences, the editor’s visible marks making clear the manipulation of images as they enter our daily lives. This composition clarifies not only the process by which images act as public informants, but also asks its viewer to consider how the dissemination of pictures comes to influence broader perceptions and expectations of what criminality looks like.