SIMON MÓRICZ-SABJÁN IS THE WINNER OF THE CAPA GRAND PRIZE HUNGARY 2022

“Objects, texts, etc., just as molecules in the “primordial soup”, in the course of their free (random) movements seek out their own “geometric loci”, taken in the poetic sense.
Humans are left with the task of on the one hand, noticing the existing poetic features, and on the other hand, by adding and projecting their conceptual stock-pile, transforming into poetry the already extant formal-esthetic beauties (pebbles, landscape, etc.)”
Miklós Erdély: Poetry as a Self-assembling System (1973) English translation by John Batki

Cold Trail – Forensic Aesthetics

The most exciting question for me is the relationship between the sense of reality and the photograph. For the past nearly seven years, I have been involved in real forensics; trying to learn and do the job of a forensic technician with a camera. The setting and technical parameters of my images are, as far as possible, in line with the methodology that allows a photograph to become material evidence. The research and the logic of their creation follows exactly the thinking and the eyes of police professionals working at the crime scene. The aim is to create a credible document that can be used at the investigative stage and in criminal proceedings, needless to say, it is therefore inherently devoid of any artistic intent by nature.

I have not become a qualified police photographer; however, during the fellowship, I was able to participate as an observer for the second time at the Police Education Training Centre’s Crime Technician photography practice. I needed this in order to be aware of the crime scene technicians’ studies from the photography image-making aspects and working methods, so that I could adhere to these as well. My Non-Disclosure Agreement(NDA) allowed me to review years of police photo archives. I needed the latter to familiarize myself with the aesthetics of the realized documents. My series is basically built on these two foundations.

It is very common in photography for authors to tell a story with images; in such a case, each photograph has its place, role and meaning in the narrative. These can add up to a final meaning. My photographs taken before and after the fellowship do not tell the story of the individual crimes, nor do they give us an accurate picture of their solutions. All together, they are able to present a world unknown to us visible only to the eyes of the victims, the perpetrators and the police.

From a technical photographic point of view, the task of the forensic examination is easy to understand; the consistent application of the forensic technician’s methodology gives the set of rules under which the pictures are taken. Field inspection is one and cannot be repeated, its aim is to collect and record as much information as possible, and later to accurately read, interpret and unravel it. The physical evidence found at the scene carries more weight than witness testimony. By learning and mastering an objective and precise image capturing method, the photograph can be reconstructed as a document. It is important that the images appropriated from the police environment must not be compromised in the system of material evidence, must not depart from the nature and rules of forensic photographs, so that the aesthetics of each photograph can be further constructed, while their role as documents are enhanced.

However, the world of forensics (in a different form and role) is increasingly present in more and more places: in TV series, detective stories, public discourses, and everyday life. It has found its place in a number of disciplines, in culture – and of course, the visual arts are no exception. Artistic approaches usually deal with issues that explore the use of documents as evidence via legal and ethical questions.

If we look at the issue from a visual point of view, only those images can be appropriated that remain fully consistent with the real document used in the investigative and evidential process. The visual quality of many field recordings also depends on coincidences, and these are the most interesting situations. These are mostly caused by the technical shortcomings of the equipment and the photographic techniques of the people who took them. Despite, or in addition to, the strict requirements of the system, recordings can still retain their authentic document status.

We tend to focus on homicides, while minor crimes paint a much broader picture of our society, their less identifiable toolboxes leave us with more readily interpretable systems. To the outside eye, the most exciting photographs are those that make us feel uncomfortable at first glance and are more about the mystery surrounding the crimes. There are few things that can excite our brains more than the pursuit of the truth. The consumption of crime stories enables us to work with our own fears and aggressive impulses without being aware of it, but curiosity, the unravelling of the mystery, is now a fully cognitive activity.

It is also worth keeping in mind that certain information can change our attitudes in an instant. If we look at a picture of a house and only know what we see, our minds are likely to go in a completely different direction. But if we are told that a crime has been committed on this site, the way we are looking at it changes forever. It is also the initial image, the first image, that the officer sees when arriving at the address, and in many cases, the first image in the photo appendix of the report. Most people always expect the worst-case scenario. All of the images shown here are taken at scenes of minor crimes and never crimes against life, yet most of the objects are capable of becoming murder weapons in our imagination by the proximity of the concept of crime.

I have become familiar with historical photography and contemporary art projects based on, and drawing from, the world of crime. My aim is to bring a spontaneously generated, self-assembling, aesthetic system from the criminal (forensic) environment into an artistic space. We can even call this the aesthetics of forensics. In sorting through my own archives of thousands of photographs, I also used the systems I had discovered in the archives and learned at the training. The things we see in my photographs are ordinary homes and objects, but because of their role, and because they are photographed at the scenes of crimes, they can represent the vulnerability of the shell of our homes and our everyday lives even the fragile nature of our own security.