Ian Brady Myra Hindley Photographs Moors Murders Mug Shots
November 19, 2007
Without these two photographs it is generally agreed that the ‘legend’ of the moors murders as we understand it or as it has come down to us might not and indeed probably would not exist. They are remarkable photo’s , but what exactly makes them so….Like most public photographs they do not flatter their subjects in any way….and it is the public nature of these images that we have to examine first.
Most public photographs ( passport/drivers permit/newspaper ) are intended for a large, and for the most part disinterested audience. Their purpose is to record a reality without commenting on it. They are , if you will , documents without editorial. Their purpose is functional and utilitarian. They do not try to tell us anything about the subject , indeed they ideally should do just the opposite recording the outward image and that alone. They do not require or want us to think about who or what these people are. They are , ‘for the record’ and for nothing else. They have no social function beyond keeping record. They neither elicit or require an emotional response. They are , above all else , neutral……
This at least is the theory , and for the most part that theory holds true but in one respect it starts to fall down….and that is when we come to consider the mug shot. The mug shot is a public (official/bureaucratic) photo intended in large measure for a private audience (police) . The fact that it sometimes has a second social function when published in the press is problematic to say the least. Why are mug shots published?. Most would agree that their publication is quite unnecessary. They are , in almost all instances , even less flattering than the general run of public photos. And our reaction to them is, almost without exception , emotional.
It’s not my purpose here to argue the rights or wrongs of these kind of public/private photos but to understand the power of the Brady/Hindley shots we must reflect on how these images came to us. And the first thing that strikes us is that they are images created under duress. This is no less true in the case of Brady and Hindley than it is of others.
Myra’s image has as they say been done to death. Myra as ‘hard bitch’ and ‘the most evil woman in Britain’. But strangely few , if any, have remarked on what must be it’s most interesting feature , it’s total lack of sexuality. It is after all an image of a young and not unattractive woman. Let me put it this way. It’s not uncommon for a man to seek out the image of a ‘strong’ and even ‘cruel’ woman as an aid to sexual stimulation and yet no one would use this image of Myra for such a purpose. Whatever else it conveys , whatever overt or subliminal subtext we may look for in it it is peculiarly lacking in anything that pertains to eroticism , even in the most vivid imagination. The image of Brady is however quite sexual. The pouting lip….the sullen stare ….the hint of arrogance all make for what is , whether we are conscious of it or not , a sexual image. Almost everyone who writes of Brady remarks on his uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley. Indeed the young Elvis might well pass for Brady’s son.
Brady’s photograph does not jump out at us in quite the same dramatic fashion as Hindley’s but the image is nonetheless far more powerful than Hindley’s….and more disturbing. There is little by way of shock or immediate dramatic impact when we first see it. If anything it is rather unimpressive and quite forgettable. If we were asked to recall this image in our minds after one cursory glance we would be hard pressed to do so. We would remember little were it not for those pouting lips….and it’s the lips that we remember. There is , if we are honest , totally honest , something erotic about the image of Brady. Even as a heterosexual man I am conscious of an almost animal sexuality lurking behind this images. I cannot imagine how a woman might respond to it but I can guess. And my guess is that most women are in large degree disturbed not so much by the images of Brady but by their reaction to it or rather their reaction to the sexuality inherent in the image.
Brady’s photograph has a truth that we don’t find with that of Hindley. There is no evidence to suggest that anyone thought of Myra as a
‘hard bitch’ prior to her arrest and the children she picked up for Brady must have seen her as no more and no less than a ‘nice lady’. The image we have of her then by way of her mug shot is demonstrable a false one. Brady on the other hand , prior to his arrest (and afterwards) is refereed to almost exclusively in terms of his good looks…..he is likened to Presley with all that that implies. Both photographs were as I stated earlier taken under duress and in Brady’s this translate itself into a ‘smoldering’ aspect which heightens the sexual element whereas with Hindely it does no more that exaggerate the sense we have of an animal caught in the headlights. All factors in these photos seem to have the effect of dehumanising Hindley so much so that after all these years we are left with image devoid of any substance. With Brady his mug shot has the obviously unintentional effect of paradoxically humanising him. The more we examine it the more we are aware that this is indeed a flesh and blood person. The image staring back at us is all too real , and disturbing.
The most important element in these photographs is however not to be found in the photographs themselves but in what we , the viewer bring to them , our fears and prejudices and our cultural conditioning. And the ‘popularity’ of these mug shots , the iconic status they have achieved is down to what we bring to the image. They are both (Hindley’s in particular) classical images. They conform to the same rules as do the images we might see of the ancient Greeks or classic architecture. They have a symmetry and aspect that we recognise even it we don’t understand it. This is , in part , intentional….the photographer seeks for a ‘good shot’ and in this instance he/they outdid themselves. These images are historic , ie they refer to something in the past and the fact that they were taken in the first place implies a story that preceded them. Like history we see them in retrospect. Our view is necessarily distorted.
We are told that the camera never lies and here indeed is the proof. Both Brady and Hindley are outsiders but not in the way that many still choose to believe. It’s not their crimes that define their outsider status. They were outsiders first and their crimes were no more than an expression of this reality. Brady has always insisted that these crimes were a philosophical exercise , he freely admits to a sexual element , but insists that philosophy not lust was the motivation. And Brady is doing no more than stating what is obvious to any informed student of these crimes. To this day many feel the need to reject this fact , they feel that to credit him with such a motive is somehow to give him a significance , a credibility he does not deserve. There is also an element of snobbery in this , “What would a Glasgow street thug know of philosophy”. The fact that Brady’s interests are for the most part of an intellectual nature is something they feel compelled to deny , in spite of the evidence to the contrary. Neither Hindley nor Brady killed for sexual gratification. If that was their motive they would have in large degree been forgotten by now. They killed to realise , to give flesh so to speak to their philosophy, to their sense of being outsiders…”and the word became flesh” Their crimes had an inevitability about them. Brady never stalked children , he did not act under some compulsion. He had no unnatural interest in children. He did of course pick child victims and photographed at least one in pornographic poses but this was almost incidental to the acts themselves , the object of the exercise was not the children , he was if anything indifferent to his victims……this very indifference is what marks him and Hindley out from the crowd.
The real power of these photographs is that they capture this reality. We are faced with two people who look out at us from their world. They have little if any interest in what we might think of them. Brady set out, like Raskolnikov , to become Napoleon and he succeeded. In spite of what many choose to believe , Brady won. Protesting otherwise is futile. He has our attention. He has made his point and in his terms made it well. We are , regardless of how we try to square the circle , an audience that he created. We seek out his image. We are drawn to it…These images of Hindley and Brady are their ultimate validation….life , their life, has literally become art.
Image making is fundamental to us as human beings. The first humans to exist on this planet turned to image making to define their world and in the process of course defined themselves as human. They also used images as a form of control over a wild and frightening space in which they found themselves. Image making as magic. Image making as religion. And be it Hitler or Christ it’s the image that often speaks the loudest and has the last word.
To view other post relating to the Moors Murders follow this link and scroll down.
November 20, 2007 at 12:15 pm
An interesting entry.
You have accurately put into words a feeling, a sense, that I have had surrounding these photographs for many years now. As a child in the mid-nineties, no older than eight, I first remember seeing these two images. I clearly recall watching the evening news with my mother and hearing the news-reader say “…the moors murders”, a camera panning slowly across Saddleworth Moor and the faces of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady filled the screen.
While initially my attention was caught by the bleach-blonde, who’s expression I perceived to be that of someone who was bored; it was Brady’s image that resonated with something inside me, though subconsciously at the time.
Then, just over a year ago now, I brought a copy of Duncan Staff’s The Lost Boy; flicking straight through to the photographs, as I am guilty of doing with so many books I own.
I found myself engrossed in the phtographs of Brady…it seemed so strange to see him smiling, relaxing at home…I realised I was seeing him as a real person; a person who existed and who exists still. A living man, a sexual being. It was a startling realisation and yet such an obvious one.
Furthermore I found myself attracted to this young man…I commented to my mother that the police mugshots did neither justice; her initial reaction suggesting that to think either of them anything other than cold blooded child-killers, was blasphamous; understandable perhaps given that at the time of the murders she was eighteen and saturated with details daily of the unfolding events; a generational perception.
However upon showing her these “human” images of them, she was unable to deny what I was trying to convey to her.
I have since brought other books relating to Brady and Hindley…and find myself unexpectedly surprised each time I see them, a “normality” in their personal pictures.
As I look at their police mugshots once more, I again feel a strange longing; something in Brady’s exresion causes me to what to know him.
November 20, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Thank you for your comment. It’s unusual to find someone who admits such an interest in Brady (and quite refreshing). I write about him quite a bit so drop into my blog from time to time and you should find something new about him. He’s an interesting man and to be honest I admire him , which is not to say that I’m blind to the terrible harm he has done but there are worse , a lot worse than him in 10 Downing Street. He should , I belive , have been released years ago…I keep intending to write to him but to date have never gotten around to it…..
November 21, 2007 at 8:10 pm
You’re most welcome.
Those around me do find my interest in the case and in Brady in particular somewhat strange…it’s almost as if there is an unspoken rule that states to show an interest, an admiration in such a man is, as I said in my previous post, blasphemous.
It surprise, offends even, people that I should be so open in regard to my interest…that I should consider him somebody I would like to have the chance to speak with and to know; and more-so that I should include a sexual eliment into the mix.
There are people that think my age plays a part in my lack of what I would class a theatrical repugnance at the mere mention of his name; which I have encountered first hand.
At nineteen I have no living memory, and as I said before I believe this explains why many of my mother’s generation are so entrentched with their idea’s; their tendency to create him a monster, rather than to think of him in those human terms. As my mother said to me only this week “…it was everywhere, everyday…in all the papers and on the news”
I myself find him interesting, and I have actually written to him; although I recieved no reply and to be honest I’m inclined to believe that my letter wasn’t actually passed onto him. That said, I have the feeling the adress I sent it to may now be out of use.
I do enjoy reading your entry on Ian Brady and I agree that he should have been released many years ago now. In my mind he would’ve been had it not been for the involvement of Myra Hindley. It was her sex that drew so greater attention; the mere fact that a women had aided (to whatever extent) Brady in the murder of innocent children.
January 18, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Mr Holmes, a very useful name and a very honourable job you do in looking after the mentally ill and mentally injured. There is a difference.
The photo of Myra is her scowling face, one that she would use I am told in defiance. She would have been ‘home and dry’ had that suitcase not been found, and the slip for left luggage not put in her transient object – bible – prayer book – p/b – for her confirmation. It confirmed her Catholicism was a tool for this macabre secondary object. Not a transient object, but a personal item, a trophy that held trophies.
Yet they still say her pose interpreted as in Andy Warhol style is iconography. No.
I disagree. She was now at war with the taker of the photograph who was a police officer, and if we are to believe the accounts she was in bed with one during the stalking phases subversively, a mistress, and preparing her skills for entry into the police force. Turn stalking around to occupational narcissism and we have under surveillance in legal terms. The outcome is different though – a hit woman of her own volition? (Lost Boy)
So she would exhibit this body language of pupil dilation as rage, with sheer and utter contempt. That is what is projected onto the recipient. For more read Klein and Winnicott.
In contrast Ian Steward Brady in this pose is Ian Stewart still. The pose is juvenile, and is not mocking, it is in fact the fact he has been recognised for his ‘craft’ whatever craft that might be. That like all juvenile Borstal boys has been damaged due to their childhood phantasies. This is the right spelling as unconscious internalized good and bad splitting, one on the good and one on the bad.
The good was not letting evil come over his mother’s door, over Myra’s yes. She was not an outcast as he was. The two show both outcast Glaswegian boy/man in conflict and woman -sharp, angular and in character in contrast to the feminist soft edges of girls and women at that time. The roles of Lacanian sexual division show here to me the masculine roles as ‘suture’ – playing a part in a production of her own projected character on the observer.
But that is an academic debate now I am on my second Masters as more than half way to the goals of completion. Having passed my Masters in December to include medical sciences in the MSc in Science in the Medical Frontiers strand I hope to use this to better the imaging quality in observing what the posed character is projecting and not be contaminated by ‘counter- transference’.
Myra to Gorton residents who remember her was a bully, and not the ‘nice girl’ who belonged to the female gender at the time. Nice girls did not chain smoke, swear and live in slum dwellings with surplus income and no parental discipline, or compliance to chores and duty. Myra and Maureen, the image of difference among the beauties of the ballroom, how different from the role models of Hayley Mills, and the followers in the pursuit of being the perfect housewife and mother at this era.
Ian, in contrast was a nomad, and to some extent still is. In tenement confines, approved school, Borstal, in prison, in a mental unit incarcerated till death. Expelled from social classes of philosophical thinkers.
All are total institutions where ‘deculturing’ is paramount to success and submission of the inmates, recruits or deviants.
But to end. Myra had the very skills that would have made her a good soldier had she been brave enough to take on competitor, not a child, or weaker subject.
Therefore, the fact she drove chose and bragged of her exploits shows how the gaze is her ‘Psycho’ realisation. It is her début. Colour we never see in either’s life. Ian is said not to lie. But I believe philosophy is a lie in that those who read it interpret it in value laden discourse with examples. It is a debating theoretical agenda.
Ian Brady is all that is left now. Stewart fled long ago in this internalization of his other character in boyhood. He cannot remember who went where and how still, is vague and repressed by his own acts and the environment about him. The images of both are still and mute. Yet they say more in the chosen identity portrayed in ‘suturing’ the character to the observer.
Ian accepted gladly his lot to be a serial killer, to be a bank robber he failed, so next best is tag along with the one who could fulfil his internalized phantasies and fantasies externalized. And that he did.
That is why she ‘chooses’ him as her disciple instead of Judo victim. I will not say partner/opponent.
February 17, 2008 at 5:52 pm
[...] because he was not impressed by the fact that I had shown sympathy for the Moors Murder Ian Brady which of course had the effect of leading even more people to my blog. According to Problogger [...]
March 21, 2008 at 11:52 am
Have you read Gordon Burn’s novel Alma Cogan? He’s very interested in the ‘psychopathology of fame’ generally and the iconography of the Hindley image is addressed in this book, in a very subtle and appealing way. All his stuff is worth reading really.
March 22, 2008 at 11:13 am
John ,
I did actually buy the book a couple of years ago but never got around to reading it….so thanks for reminding me of it. I’ll root it our and read it over the next few days..
July 15, 2008 at 5:22 pm
This is so good an article and better written than I could do on Myra.
It answers the victimisation of Pat Cairns quite well from the books of Jean Ritchie and insights of this predator. I know that Pat was and is a lovely person from a childhood friend and that is good enough for me from one of God’s ‘sisters’ as a nun. I think Myra tainted everything and everybody as Janie Jones found as the next one to fall under her svengali spell as did Ian Brady. Yet like the ‘Emperor’s new cloths’ fable few can see him for the disfunctional genderless misfit that Borstal created in my view. Read it and then the history of the failed Borstal regime of sadistic punishment and think.
Did Myra target Ian to get Maureen a job with her, if so what was that job, and why did they sleep together in a single bed as adult women and why did one stay at home and the other get shifted at preschool age? And why instead of her auntie and uncle did the four year old after the war go to the poor grannie who had no money and had to take bottles back to live, due a home wash house and be a home embalmer, undertaker and layer out in the small terrace as is recorded? Read on, it is a long discourse,but worth clicking on the link to read I think as it explains more than I can who is the monster and the mastermind.
http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=40
September 14, 2008 at 2:02 am
i need original pictures of ian and myra, from academic work. please emite from my e-mail. thank you!
February 9, 2009 at 6:59 pm
The mugshot pic of Brady is indeed fascinating, I have seen many other photos of him, his eyes are incredible.
I have had a deep interest in Brady for years, my husband thinks me quite strange for being so enamoured.
I myself cannot explain it, it is without words.
July 24, 2009 at 9:27 pm
[...] Evans was the last and least remembered victim of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Of the child victims he was the oldest and at 17 hardly a child as we would understand it today. [...]
August 7, 2009 at 12:13 pm
I feel the fact that you Jackie say you feel fascinated by the mugshot of Ian Brady and that he has incredible eyes is worrying in the extreme. You need to go to Specsavers. I think he is utterly repulsive and looks ‘stupid’. As for him resembling a young Elvis the mind boggles. It’s just a photograph of an evil murderer who killed little children nothing more.
September 14, 2009 at 2:50 pm
He was known to be good looking in his day, it’s mentioned EVERYWHERE in the literature you batshit cow!
August 7, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Interesting, worrying, maybe..
August 7, 2009 at 5:07 pm
I guess I’m also one of those women who find the man fascinating. Let’s put it this way, judging from my past track record with men, I’ve always been attracted to good looking bastards.
Oh, hi by the way!
August 7, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Hi Lucy,
Yes it’s weird isn’t it, but then again maybe not, being interested in Brady in no way makes us head cases; we’re just the honest ones; some of the folks who rant and rave have other motives I’m sure.
September 14, 2009 at 2:53 pm
I’m leaving this blog now, after scoring a well deserved victory over the nutter on the other brady thread, cigarettes and alcohol.
TATTY BYE
October 4, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I’ve always found Ian Brady sexy. Nothing wrong with it. I don’t agree with what he did, I just think on the surface he is attractive, but not attractive on the inside.
January 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm
It was june and I don’t understand why was myra dressing a coat or something like that. was it cold or rainy?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196727/Pictured-Chilling-photos-Moors-Murderer-Myra-Hindley-standing-victims-grave.html
or
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/legacygallery/gallery-4305/Myra-Hindley-Pictures.html?selectedImage=36082
March 4, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Oh, he was gorgeous – make no mistake. The photograph does have something overtly sexual about it-to me anyway. The eyes, the lips…everything. I sometimes wonder-would I find his image appealing if it weren’t for the murders? I doubt it, what is it?
I would love to have wrote to him when he was in better health, truth is I wouldn’t know what to say.
Any audio of him speaking around? I’ve yet to even hear his voice, I’d enjoy it. Do reply.
May 24, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I would love to know if anyone has ever written to Ian and what kind of response was given