ticketsMember | Make a donation

[Bruno Richard Hauptmann in Electric Chair]

1936
Not on view
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.
In spite of the universal ban on cameras in American death chambers, news editors have long recognized the public’s hunger for eyewitness images of high-profile executions. When Bruno Richard Hauptmann was due to be executed for the kidnapping and murder of the young son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the International News Photos agency commissioned an artist to craft a photographic composite of the condemned man being strapped into the electric chair by two prison guards. The grisly image was created by staging the scene with actors then pasting headshots of Hauptmann and his executioners onto their bodies.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Bruno Richard Hauptmann in Electric Chair]
  • Artist: John Wolters (American, active 1930s)
  • Date: 1936
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Dimensions: Image: 19.3 x 24.2 cm (7 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.)
    Frame: 35.6 x 43.2 cm (14 x 17 in.)
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Collection of Alan Lloyd Paris
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs