Walter Tuchin - police photographer

The work of retired 1950s police crime-scene photographer, Walter Tuchin, is now on display within the Archive Gallery of the Justice & Police Museum.

Tuchin's photographs, taken on behalf of the Scientific Investigation Bureau, between 1952 and1957, document a variety of criminal investigations and accident scenes. Subjects, range from the banal to the shocking: we encounter stolen cutlery, the crumpled bonnet of a car, the hands of a strangler, and domestic murder in a backyard. Each photograph is evenly illuminated, meticulously detailed and carefully composed. This emphasis on clarity was required by the detectives in charge of the case and by the judge in the courtroom. Yet, despite the surety of his method, Tuchin's photography, at least for the modern viewer, also seems to be charged with something else - a quality that is haunting and surreal.