Index marks the spot? The photo-diagram's referential system

Abstract

This article explores the genealogy of a paradox in the evidentiary logic of the press photograph. While such photographs are supposed to gain their special authority from their unmediated relationship to the events they represent, they are often illegible without supplementary graphical material. The picture press of the 1920s and 1930s, saturated with re-creations of brutal crimes and messy accidents, fashioned an elaborate system of arrows, daggers, circles and crosses added by hand in paint or ink to help guide the viewer's attention to the salient detail. Examining the hybrid idiom of the photo-diagram, this article investigates how photography's indexicality and its multiplicity seek reconciliation at this revealing juncture in media history, and explores the ramifications for the evidentiary status of the press photograph in the digital era.