re: The Axeman of New Orleans

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Édouard Martel was an unsuccessful French photographer and inventor who traveled throughout the U.S. during the first two decades of the 20th century, trying to drum up interest and investors for a device that added timer and automatic exposure features to Kodak’s popular line of folding Brownie cameras. During his travels he took thousands of automated photos to test and refine his invention.
Often he would wake up early, set up a hidden camera in an inconspicuous spot on the streets of whatever city he happened to be in, and then walk to a nearby café or bar, so that he could capture candid scenes of daily life to remember his travels by. The best of these photos were selected for Martel’s one and only gallery show, in Paris 1924. Unfortunately, Martel died penniless and unknown in 1955, and it was left to his daughter Jeanne to sort through the boxes and boxes of photos he left behind, to see what should be kept and what could be discarded. During this process she came across this photo, taken in New Orleans on the morning of October 28, 1919, a few hours before Martel boarded a steamer ship and returned to France.
It turns out that Martel hated motion blurs in his photographs, because he thought they would reflect badly on the speed and accuracy of his lens mechanism. This prejudice made him cast aside and overlook what was probably the most important photo he ever took.
What makes this photo so special? The night before it was taken, the notorious and still unidentified serial killer known only as The Axeman of New Orleans had committed his last murder, hacking Mike Pepitone to death in his bedroom and then fleeing the scene just as Pepitone’s wife was discovering the body. Could this be him returning to his residence? It’s impossible to say, but if it is, the image appears to belie the legend (based on the shaky testimony of Pauline and Mary Bruno, and prevailing prejudice of the time) that only a black man was capable of such savagery.

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