Images of Justice

Last fall, I asked photographer Rich Dubin to capture images of some of the actual locales where the events discussed in Nothing to Fear took place. Rich proved to be the ideal person for the job. He not only loves Hitchcock films, but also has roots in Jackson Heights – the very same section of Queens where Manny Balestrero lived.

Some of Rich’s excellent photos appear on this site and others will be included in the published version of the book. Among them are two especially striking images that conjure the themes of Nothing to Fear.

The first, below, is a shot of the New York State Supreme Courthouse at 60 Centre Street in Manhattan:

An architectural landmark, this building houses the New York State Supreme Court and the Office of the County Clerk. Its majestic columns evoke soaring ideals of law and justice. Inscribed across the front of the courthouse are words attributed to George Washington: “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.”

But what does it feel like when justice fails? Only those who have been victimized by false arrest and wrongful conviction can speak to that profound trauma. Even for those of us who merely read about these tragedies in the press, however, the reports remind us how precarious justice can be and how vigilant our legal institutions must remain to fulfill their duty to protect the innocent.

Hypnotic and disorienting, Rich’s photo captures a sense of the upheaval that surrounds the revelation of mistakes by our justice system. The marble columns, which typically emanate purity and power, here seem to be straining to support the engraved message. And the message itself becomes progressively harder to read, trailing off in a way that suggests the elusiveness of justice. On the far right of the frame, meanwhile, a tilting building appears poised to crush the courthouse.

The photo calls to mind an early scene in The Wrong Man, when Manny Balestrero looks up at the police headquarters building in Elmhurst. The building appears slanted to the left, an angle that both underlines Manny’s unease and signals that inside something off-kilter awaits him.

Another cinematic reference point for this photo is the city-bending scene from Christopher Nolan’s Inception. But here Rich has created the effect not with a dream, but with a very creative camera angle.

The next photo is a shot of the former police headquarters building at 240 Centre Street in Manhattan.

While not as disorienting as the courthouse image, this image is no less evocative. Another Manhattan landmark, the building housed the NYPD at the time of the historical events discussed in Nothing to Fear.

The angle and the early-afternoon shadows keep us at a remove from the building’s architectural splendor. There’s a sense of mystery about what went on inside. At the same time, the spectacular sun looms, shooting shafts of light towards the building’s darkened windows. The photo evokes a suspect’s experience of being placed under the hot lights of a police interrogation room. Except here it’s the sun that’s putting police practices under the hot lights. Will the building spill its secrets?

One of my goals in the first half of Nothing to Fear is to illuminate the first wave of mistaken identity cases that gripped New York 75 years ago. Somehow, this photo captures the spirit of that enterprise.

If you find these photos as striking as I do, you can see more of Rich’s wonderful New York City photos on his Instagram page. His Instagram handle is @rtdphoto.