The Burns Archive is a collection of over 700,000 historical photographs that document
disturbing subject matter: obsolete medical practices and experiments, death, disease, disasters, crime, revolutions, riots and war. Newsweek posted a
select gallery this past October, as well as a
video interview and walk-through with curator and collector Dr. Stanley B. Burns, a New York opthalmologist.
(Via) (Content at links may be disturbing to some.) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 26, 2011 -
15 comments
Enrique Metinides:
In the Place of Coincidence "On Feburary 2011, Enrique Metinides will turn seventy-seven. Fifty of those years have been dedicated to what is called in Mexico “red note” photography. Sensational images of the tabloid press, images of accidents, deaths, disasters.
Metinides’ images capture exquisite and compelling moments from such tragic events. His photographs a complex dynamic which both attract and repel; photographs which become engraved in our imagination through the power of the aesthetic experience." [graphic content]
posted by puny human
on Mar 11, 2011 -
4 comments
The Daily News has posted a 215 image gallery of photos by serial killer Rodney Acala 66, convicted of the murders of 4 women and a girl in California. Authorities suspect there may be many more victims; possibly up to 20, killed between the years of 1971 to `79. The NYPD has released the photos in hopes of identifying possible victims & closing a bunch of cold cases. Thus informed, I find these photos deeply haunting; most are basic, boilerplate snapshots typical of their era, while others have a bizarre dreamlike quality (i.e.- in #3 in the posted series a young woman appears unfocused & wraithlike, her raised arms framed by trees, in #9 a subject bending over backwards at first appears to hung upside down, mouth vanished by foliage) several subjects in the series appear again & again. Alcala's photos reveal him as a pretentious manipulative hack, whose unintended best are evidence of the beast within. 21 women featured in a previous series of 120 shots have been found alive.
posted by vurnt22
on Apr 24, 2010 -
92 comments
Love thy Neighbor Photographer and author Steven Hirsh has photographed the homes of registered New York State sex offenders. A wonderful writer and photographer, this work is chilling, alarming, beautiful. I get that
Quentin Tarantino feeling of beauty and disgust. Look at me, nooooo look away. The series of 24 images are on
Hirsch's website.
posted by doug3505
on Jan 7, 2008 -
41 comments
A crackdown in Texas. America - land of the free. And to guarantee that freedom, everyone has to be constantly watchful. Like the photo store clerk from
Eckerd who dutifully reported a Peruvian-born couple's lewd shots of their infants to the Richardson (Dallas/Texas suburbs) police. The photos showed the parents' two infants bathing naked, lying together in bed with their mother (again naked) and the 1-year-old Rodrigo suckling his mother's (naked) breast. So the couple was arrested -- the maximum prison sentence for the crime in question being 20 years -- and the children taken away. (verbatim
k5)
posted by The Jesse Helms
on Apr 20, 2003 -
77 comments
So you read the "Madman and the Professor" and thought it interesting.
Edward Ruloff is another murdering philologist with the extra cachet that his 1871 trial for killing a dry-goods clerk was one of the first to test the
admissability of photographs as evidence. The Supreme Court agreed with lower rulings that they could be allowed; Ruloff was
hanged. In 1845, he had been accused of murdering his wife and child and was imprisoned for ten years for the abduction of his wife, but without a
corpus delecti, he could not be convicted for the murder of his child.
This man is writing a biography of Ruloff; a publisher could do a lot worse.
posted by Mo Nickels
on Sep 26, 2001 -
3 comments
