Tobin Bridge, Mystic River, Boston, Massachusetts, from the series "On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam"

About this artwork

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Joel Sternfeld

Title

Tobin Bridge, Mystic River, Boston, Massachusetts, from the series "On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam"

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1993

Medium

Chromogenic print

Edition

1 of 7

Inscriptions

Unmarked recto; inscribed verso, on mount, along bottom edge, in black ink: "1/7 Tobin Bridge, Mystic River, Boston, Massachusetts, September 1993 N-September 1993 / P-September 1996 Joel Sternfeld" Carol Stuart, seven months pregnant, was returning home from a birthing class with her husband, Charles, on the night of October 23, 1989. At 8:35 P.M., Charles Stuart called the police from his car phone to report that a black man had forced the white couple at gunpoint to drive to the predominantly black neighborhood of Mission Hill. In his desperate call for help, Stuart claimed that the man robbed them, shot and killed his wife, and shot him in the abdomen. During an intensive three-month investigation, police detained and interrogated numerous black men from the Mission Hill area. A suspect was about to be arrested when Matthew Stuart, Charles’s brother and accessory to the crime, confessed that the entire story had been made up to collect insurance money and that Charles had shot his wife and wounded himself to conceal his crime. After learning of his brother’s confession, Charles Stuart lept to his death from this bridge. From the series, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam

Dimensions

Image/paper: 47.5 × 59.7 cm (18 3/4 × 23 9/16 in.); Mount: 63.2 × 76.5 cm (24 15/16 × 30 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Jeanne and Richard S. Press

Reference Number

1998.853

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.