I watched it all unfold, the tears, the double-play with her boyfriend, ratting his tepid ass out just to get back home to her mother’s loving arms after slitting that poor girl’s throat because she couldn’t handle the fucking or the fucking drugs and I hate her.

The extradition, lies, the privileged little muppet on the stand. I hated her. I still want her to be euthanized. I look at her, and Sallecito, and Guede and I know that this is privilege gone wrong. A drunken coke-fueled sex game gone wrong where everybody loses, all but America’s little dirty angel who absconded back to her haven full of white-bread, white-collar, and whitewashed paraphernalia of guilt getting away with it. I watched it all unfold, the tears, the double-play with her boyfriend, ratting his tepid ass out just to get back home to her mother’s loving arms after slitting that poor girl’s throat because she couldn’t handle the fucking or the fucking drugs and I hate her. I hate her because I see her guilt, it stretches across her freckled face like some sort of abject second skin. May you forever burn for your crimes, for the blood on your hands and for that crooked little maggot-filled smile that opens and closes like the anus of hell when you speak your venomous un-truth.

The little girl in the picture, her school picture, all happy in pigtails. My child. She is a perfect blend of our beings. I want to squeeze her little cheeks. Someday she will be all grown up, we will have to re-paint her room and return it to that of her father’s study. It will be a sad affair. They grow up so fast, don’t they? She is a bolt of lightening, little Amanda…and talk about clever. I keep thinking I should have her IQ tested, I know it will be well-above average. I know they say it can be damaging for the psyche if one has too many expectations, but with a child of this caliber, maybe she should be aware of her “special” abilities early on. This weekend were taking her to her cousin’s birthday party. Last year’s party was such a debacle. The little girl that got ahold of that knife on the patio table …Patty’s neglect after cutting the cake and leaving such a dangerous thing around all those kids. Thankfully, Amanda was busy with the other children playing along the tree line.

De Boulogne was well known for distributing current to the faces of his sitter’s to produce, under will of God and man’s place within God’s universe, a line of expressions from horror to that of piety on the faces of his subjects. The fallacy of which, was to tether God through pain to produce a catalogue of foresaid expressions.

Darwin’s cataloged fallacy of human inter-recognition found a home in his “Expressions of Emotions in Man and Animals”. The biological determinism and origin of the species that it tried to coalesce under duress of puritanical theological belief systems in the Nineteenth Century facial traits perhaps makes more sense in its general scientific research. Where it fails is its reliance on Tournachon and Duchenne de Boulogne’s photographs from “The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression”. De Boulogne was well known for distributing electric current to the faces of his sitter’s to produce, under will of God and man’s place within God’s universe, a line of expressions from horror to that of piety on the faces of his subjects. The fallacy of which, was to tether God through pain to produce a catalogue of the foresaid expressions. Darwin would use these images for his own book, thus spreading the spiritual lie. In the case of Amanda Knox, her courtroom countenance was in thespian accord, transferred to the public at large as the case unfolded. Her baby face and perceived innocence, the face incapable of a sex game gone wrong under the will of drugs, perceived to be a revocable mistake in criminal justice proceedings. The importance of truth, belief systems, and notions of this face of innocence find their way into Mann’s work on the subject. It largely leans towards letting the viewer remain open to suggestion as half the images declare potential guilt and the other half potential innocence through media images of the trial and images of Knox as sweet child, the latter having nothing to do with the case, but was certainly used as the expression of propaganda by the family. It is a clever publication, its newspaper format perfect for the subject. Whether I have thoughts on her innocence or guilt is irrelevant. My main interest is the façade of human emotion that we collectively organize ourselves around in events such as the Knox/Kercher case and how human pathos is perhaps arranged towards a methodology of innocence of above-average looks and background through photographic practice. As if to say, someone who looks this way cannot do that.

Amanda Knox Innocent & Guilty
Peter Mann
Self Published