550:746) Jonathan Hayes
Date: 21-JUN-94  18:50

 I think that the photo of OJ Simpson on the front pages of the Post,
 Newday and the News today is one of the most beautiful and poignantly
 expressive images I have ever encountered. It's a wire photograph, from
 Reuters, I think, but is blurred and has the feel of a shot of a video
 monitor. The head tilted back slightly, utter exhaustion to the point of
 trance-like sensuousness. The eyes half-closed, shutting out the circus,
 shutting in the man. The spirit collapsed, the denial finished, the
 nightmare now visible, immediate, palpable, enveloping.

 Visually, the process of photography, wire transmission and reprint onto
 newspaper has softened the edges of the man, making him more ethereal, more
 dreamlike. It reminds me of Andres Serrano's PISS CHRIST, for some reason.
 I think there's a certain similarity between the mediation of the
 technology involved in delivering the image to the front page and the
 significance of that front page image, and the way the urine in the Serrano
 photo diffuses the light and at the same time profanes and mystifies the
 original crucifix.

 This photograph, I think, achieves what Matt Mahurin was after in his Time
 magazine cover, where he manipulates the LAPD mugshot of OJ, throwing him
 into some dismally penumbral and oppressive realm of the Eternally Damned.

.