Photographer Theo Wenner's new book documents the work of NYPD detectives in the specialized homicide division.
Photograph from "Homicide," by Theo Wenner, available via Rizzoli.
Like the book I did about my mother, this focuses on another sort of insular, private world filled with its own type of family dynamics, codes, and traditions. Homicide detectives have captured the public’s imagination in a century’s worth of movies, literature, and news; the detective has become an archetype ingrained in American mythology. I wanted to see what that world really looks like.
I was very clear from the beginning of this project, with both the publisher and the NYPD, that this is going to be photojournalistic in nature: these photographs are just a documentation of what I saw and what happened. Imagine having to not worry about ten things potentially going wrong at all times when you’re trying to take a photograph. Without it, just watching [the subject], you have complete focus in the present moment. It’s like how they say if you lose one of your senses, [another] becomes stronger. I would realize sometimes that I had no sense of time when I was photographing the detectives. I wouldn’t look at my watch for five hours [sometimes].