“A Day With Ed Kemper”
(Part 1)
Over the course of 10 hours, on an otherwise sunny Northern California day, I shot 10 rolls of Tri-X & 5 rolls of Kodachrome focused on the prison life of convicted serial killer, Ed Kemper.
Even though I had worked very happily with Leonard Wolf, both as grad student and professional collaborator, I was not enthusiastic about this project and I had made my objections known to Leonard.
The gruesome character of Kemper’s ten murders certify him as deeply disturbed, by any human standard, yet Kemp’s intense mental acuity, masked evidence of psychosis, if he didn’t come pre-packaged with a scrap-book of victims, I don’t know that I would have sorted him out as a potential killer. That was the most frightening element of the day spent shadowing his life. When I was with him, he looked nothing like a killer on the hunt, I wouldn’t have seen it, had I not already known the man he was, by knowing what he had done.
The nature of this assignment required that I’d do more than show up without doing homework. Weeks before our day trip to Vacaville, I spent hours in the library at San Francisco State, pulling together the information that, now, you could find in 2 minutes on the internet. For homework, I read all of the jaw-droopingly shocking quotes, of a thoughtful, reflective, and articulate man who became a monster.
Having seen more than enough horror in my life, none of what I learned attracted me to the project. When I drive by an auto accident, I look only long enough to make sure that there’s someone at the scene taking care of the victims. Once I see that there is, I turn away. I have no fascination with the gruesome or grotesque. Add to that the fact that I grew up in the Santa Cruz mountains, where Kemper stalked and killed his victims, I was turned off to the idea of being in the same space with this person.
Several times I thought that Leonard Wolf doubted that I had the proper open mind-set, to accomplish his mission, until finally, we had a conversation where he spoke about the psychological perversity of Kemper’s childhood, and about his life in virtual isolation — never as a way to attempt to excuse Kemper’s inexcusable acts rather as a way to attempt to understand them. This was bridging a chasm.
That conversation, more than anything else, brought me around to the challenge to tell a dark and complex story in images. I set out to construct a bridge between the monster and the man. Thus began my constant quasi-desperate search to unearth Ed Kemper’s humanity, without becoming an apologist for acts of inhumanity.
I would attempt to see Edmund Kemper, the human being and not try to characterize him as one of the most notorious, violent, terrifying serial killers of my lifetime. We’ll see…jt
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