..  ..Daniel Webb ...No 124596 ...Sommers Correctional Institution ...Somers, Connecticut ...Year of Birth 1961 ...Marital Status single ...Children none ...Date of offense August 24, 1989 ...Sentenced to death July 26, 1991 ...Status under appeal . Click on the image to view a larger version. Scroll below for an account of the session.

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Daniel Webb was sentenced to death for the murder of bank vice president Diane Gellenbeck, whom he kidnapped from a Hartford parking garage in 1989. Webb took her to a nearby park & raped her, then shot her five times when she attempted to escape. At trial Webb was generally uncooperative with defense attorneys. He refused to express remorse for his crimes, & did not attend court on the day the jury's verdict was announced. Early one morning in 1988 I was occupying a postage-stamp-size room in Kyoto, Japan. It must have been around 2:00AM when I started to spin the television dial. I stopped at a BBC documentary, only half in English, on the death penalty. Despite an early morning appointment only a few hours away, I was mesmerized by the film. Months later I learned that the film was called Fourteen Days in May. It was about the last two weeks in the life of Edward Earl Johnson, who was put to death in Mississippi's gas chamber in 1987. I tracked it down & now own a copy. The cinema verite opus served as the catalyst for my project. Driving up to the Connecticut Correctional Institute at Somers reminded me of the opening scene of Fourteen Days in May. Only the Japenese subtitles were missing. Mile after mile of green, rolling hills passed by. For this visit I had requested permission to use the large visiting room, & the administration had granted it. We could have the room to ourselves for only a limited time, though. Families had traveled a long way to see their loved ones. I knew the guards would be constantly checking their watches; I'd be in a race against the clock.

The room proved perfect; it was a scene straight out of an old Alfred Hitchcock film. Now, for me, it would be empty. We quickly set up our equipment. We awaited patiently for Daniel Webb's entrance. Tall & muscular, he stood almost 6 feet, 3 inches tall & weighed about 190 pounds. A rottweiler of a man-thick, deliberate, large-jawed, massive shouldered-he was the most physically imposing of all the men I photographed. Webb sat in the stadium-sized room like a boxer, with his corner men-the guards & the prison psychologist-scrutinizing his every move. Ever since I had seen Fourteen Days in May, I had dreamed of shooting on death row. Now, 6 years later, I was there. Though my vision had been clear from the beginning, I still struggled with what I saw around me. The more I heard prisoners speak of their lives & crimes, the less I was able to tell truth from fiction. Though Webb had done time for a similar crime, he maintains his innocence of the murder of Diane Gellenbeck. He claims he was forced by an incompetent defense attorney & an inept judge to defend himself in the court. I find it inconceivable that a judge would tolerate a defendant representing himself in a life-or-death situation. But I know that innocence, ineffective counsel, & politically motivated judges are common in death penalty cases.