Product Details
Paperback
167 pages
Feral House
Published 1996
Amazon.com
Warning: this sad, powerful, grotesque collection of black-and-white photos of mostly dead, often naked, human beings is not for the easily disturbed. The introductory text by Katherine Dunn (author of Geek Love) helps give a context to the macabre scrapbook, and the handwritten captions display irony and sometimes humor; but this is no antiquarian's sentimental portrait of the past. This book documents butchery and brutality, horrible disease and mental illness, suicide and murder. And as Dunn observes, the eye of the beholder is not innocent: "The old cop, like the old con, tries to trick us into forgiveness and complicity. By witnessing he has participated, by understanding he is culpable. And his real purpose is to disguise the truth--that he started out terrified and ended up liking it, fascinated, an aficionado."
Ingram
Based on a scrapbook collected by a homicide detective with the LAPD from the 1930s to the 1950s, this work recalls film noir-era crimes such as the "Black Dahlia Mystery" and the "Lipstick Murder," as well as on-site forensic photos, mug shots, and previously unreleased photos from such sensational cases as the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the Valentine's Day massacre. |
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