This picture shows a cropped view of James Altgens’s sixth photograph zoomed on the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository. The red line highlights a bright spot next to Billy Lovelady’s face. I first saw that peculiar bright object in the area of the Depository doorway in winter of 2014. To the best of my knowledge, the bright oval object which can be seen next to Billy Lovelady’s face did not attract the attention of thousands of people who saw this famous photograph since it was photographed by James Altgens on the 22nd November 1963. What could the bright spot mean and why no one has reported and explained it? I soon realised that merely looking at the picture would not answer the question of whether the object there could be the partial face of a person standing behind Billy Lovelady. At that time, I started my longterm project of building a 3D model of the Texas School Book Depository doorway. I reasoned that if the doorway with all its occupants could be modeled as realistically as possible, it would be possible to decide whether someone stood on the top landing in such a way that a small part of his or her head would be visible. Could the partial face of someone other than Billy Lovelady or Bill Shelley explain the bright area next to Lovelady’s face?
It took more than five years and many wrong steps to arrive at an explanation which I hope accounts for the presence of the bright object in Altgens6. I am pleased to be able to say that I have launched a video describing the details of the procedures and results on YouTube.
It is up to every viewer to judge whether the conclusions presented in my video are correct. However, this 3D reconstruction of the Depository doorway also answers a few other questions about this iconic Altgens’s photograph, questions which many researchers have asked but could not answer without the tools that are available nowadays.