Franklin McMahon

First I did a bit of research on Franklin Mc Mahon. There is this piece in The Telegraph and this obituary on the blog Illustration Art from which I found this quote:

McMahon recalled that he was hired by publications that were "confronted with mountains of material and a need to transcend the usual dreary recitation of facts and figures."  His role was to "heighten the emotional reaction to a printed piece and transmit the special flavor of a [subject]."
This attempts to explain why reportage still has a place in the news.  I was lucky to see one of Mc Mahon's drawings from 1965 in the flesh at the Library of Congress  at that point I had never heard of Mc Mahon but the drawing spoke for itself, simple and lively it drew me to look closer.

 The first drawing has the most movement in it because the lawyer is drawn twice and looks as though he is moving towards her. I thought that he was guiding  Mrs Bryant to place her hand on the bible to testify but the Bridgeman images says that he is putting his hands on her hips which is more provocative. McMahon confirms this in his finished drawing here. The lawyer looks predatory and the drawing portrays Mrs Bryant as passive and subordinate, in the finished drawing she looks positively flirtatious.The drawn lines are clean and confident and allow McMahon to overlay the figures without confusing the viewer.

The courtroom montage is a more finished piece where a block of colour draws the viewer's attention to the two adjacent figures. Till's uncle, Mose Wright, is drawn sunken in the chair, a small figure dominated by the white men around him who don't look at him.  The two darker areas are 1/3 way from the edges of the picture. The man who is writing looks disbelieving and the standing man looks pompous.
In the sketch of three figures McMahon is trying to capture the expression and demeanour. He notes that he is happiest with the face on the right which is more of a caricature but must represent best what he is trying to convey.
I don't understand the sketch Two men with hanging hats. Is it the seemingly obvious reference to hanging? Is it something to do with the way the men sit watching the trial (as a spectator sport?) Were they drawn separately and just appeared close on the paper or should I read something in to the way that the man on the right has his elbow      on the back of his companions chair?
The collection of drawings is a fascinating document and record of the events of the trial. (I am curious about the variety of types of paper that he drew on over the course of the trial.)  It's drawn from McMahon's personal viewpoint, he believes the defendants to be guilty and he is manipulating the viewer. He's right, but the collection of drawings are far from objective. I'm not sure how objective any journalist can be when reporting, sure they must try, but if they are in any way interested in what they see they must develop a viewpoint which will affect what they report. (See this article by Richard Taflinger)
I know that the majority of  the pictures that appear on the Bridgeman site are preparatory sketches but I was struck by how few of them actually depict the race of Emmett Till's relatives. He does in the finished drawings of Mamie Bradley and Mose Wright testifying, the courtroom montage and the picture of Willie Reed testifying so maybe I'm reading too much in to the sketches but I wonder whether he intended to portray the family as ordinary people who his white viewers could identify with rather than people who could be considered different and therefore less important or deserving of  justice.
The collection does feel very immediate, a personal response to what he sees in front of him. Each drawing is a snapshot and makes me want to see what happens next. There is a clarity in the drawings that I don't think that you find in photographs. He picks out the details that he considers important so you have an edited viewpoint, but in his sketches he has covered everything, from the individual participants to the layout of the courtroom. His lines are bold, confident and clear, and he is more concerned with capturing atmosphere than making a visually accurate drawing (e.g. the sketches of Willie Reed). It is possible to be visually accurate but fail to capture what is going on. This can be done by selecting photographs which capture an unrepresentative moment, yes, it really happened, but no, it doesn't take into account what was going on before or after the millisecond in which the picture was taken.