Photography has a social function, it tells us how others see the world and sometimes, it serves to save a person’s life.
On this occasion we have rediscovered a very repeated story at the time and that has become viral with a Tweet.
The story of a veteran photographer Jerry Ayres and the young journalist Mark Winne. They discovered on the road a car that the police were looking for that had a hand sticking out of the trunk.
It's one of the most curious and unknown photographs in the history of photojournalism. You will not see it in the books, but on social networks they have rescued it for all readers who want to enjoy a true story that seems to be taken from a Coen brothers movie.
And we have even found the chronicles of the time.
Salvation by Gary O. Collier
In the late 1970s the world was nothing like what we know today, there was no internet, there were no cell phones, GPS only existed in the imagination of the military… Even so two journalists were able to find in a lonely Birmingham interstate highway in Alabama, which measures more than 700 km, a Dodge driving with one hand sticking out of a hole in the trunk, even today it does not seem possible to achieve such a feat despite all the advances.
To get the famous image they had to break all the traffic rules of yesterday and today. The pilot, veteran photographer Jerry Ayres asked his co-pilot to hold the wheel and took 10 photographs that would later give the aura of truth to the story: the back of an old Dodge Polara and a hand sticking out.
It all begins when the news reaching the police that there is a car circulating on the highway in the city of Birmingham in the state of Alabama. The particularity of the notices, which made the news fly like foam through the police stations in the area, is that they say a hand is seen sticking out from the trunk and the authority does not know how to find it on a road that is more than 700 km long.
The notices arrive at the headquarters of the newspaper ‘The Birmingham News’ and the two journalists that named, Mark Winne and the photographer Jerry Ayres, decided to search and capture the car. They only have three pieces of information: it’s on the freeway, it’s an old beige Dodge Polara and a hand is sticking out of the trunk. What is said to look for a needle in a haystack.
They decided to come out with a radio hooked up to the police, just like Weegee did in his day. It was the only way to have more updated news about a car that seemed invisible. For hours they traveled the highway and as it happens in the movies just when they decided to give up, they saw it.
An old car driven by a woman had the trunk half open and a moving hand stuck out of it. they notified the authorities and followed him. At that time they were experiencing one of the most dangerous situations of their lives. Yet The best thing they could think of was taking pictures.
The photographs of the car
According to what they say in the video that we linked, they were chasing them for 30 minutes. As soon as they saw them they decided that the job had to be finished. It was not an easy story to believe if it was not documented.
The camera they used does not appear anywhere although the developing envelope is preserved. Those were the years of the Nikon F2 and the Canon AE-1, two legendary machines. They did not know if those who were in the car were dangerous or if they had weapons. But they were professionals and took the photographs. They are made with a 35mm or a 50mm therefore, they had to be quite close to the criminals.
As you can see in the images that went around the world the shots were shoot right behind the car. With the road noise it would be impossible to hear the shutter. But it is that they came out through the window with the car running to get the picture.
When the bad guys in the story found out they went astray. And that was one of their mistakes because they entered a residential neighborhood and the policemen, warned by both journalists, blocked the streets with their cars.
They immediately took out the three who were in the car and forced them to open the trunk. here was Gary O. Collier. The most surprising thing is that after the time he had been inside, the exhaust fumes, and the occasional injury, all he asked for was a cigarette.
Three people were arrested: Joseph Fendley, 27; his uncle Wilburn Fendley, 49, and the driver Robin Green, 24. The reason? They had Gary O. Collier locked in the trunk, a full-blown kidnapping.
The victim met them at a bar the night before and they stole 350 dollars (about $1400 today). They beat him, stabbed him and put him in the trunk with the intention of finishing him off. He was locked up for more than 14 hours while he listened to what his last hours were going to be like.
With effort he was able to reach out and ask for help from the cars that were circulating around him. Our reporters photographed the entire rescue from the first moment, proving, as Robert Capa said that photography succeeds if you are close.
Wilburn Fendley, the eldest of the three, was exculpated, since he did not participate in the robbery. The most curious thing about this story is that nothing was known about the couple. In none of the newspapers of the time, nor in the chronicles that were written later, the names of the kidnappers appear again. They sure ended up in jail.
