Photo: Unknown, American. John Dillinger’s Feet, Chicago Morgue, 1934. Gelatin silver print 4 11/16 x 7 13/16 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Marks Family Foundation Gift, 2001 (2001.677)
Photography is not just a form of art; it also acts as evidence. It is said, “Seeing is believing” and photographs bear witness to this. Since the earliest days of the medium, the camera has been used by law enforcement as means to document and solve crimes by virtue of the unchanging nature of the image. It is in these frozen fragments of time that the police could consider the facts and explore the crime scene over and over again without ever leaving their chair. They also use photographs to identify suspects and aid in their capture, as well as distribute photos to the media in order to inform and influence the public at large.
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Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play, now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, through July 31, 2016, showcases some 70 works dating from the 1850s to the present. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s collection, the photographs featured in Crime Stories are a devilish delight, giving us a new way of looking at the sometimes gruesome and other time thrilling scenes of historic crimes and legendary criminals.
Unknown, American. Automobile Murder Scene, ca. 1935. Gelatin silver print 24.3 x 20.1 cm (9 9/16 x 7 15/16 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth Century Photography Fund, 2008 (2008.127)
Included in the exhibition are Alexander Gardner’s documentation of the events following the assassination of President Lincoln, as well as rare forensic photographs by Alphone Bertillon, the French criminologist who created the system of criminal identification that developed into the modern mug shot. The exhibition reveals how these mug shot came to be, with the portrait Marius Bourotte (1929) that reveals a series of four closely placed crop marks around the suspect’s face. By decontextualizing the suspect so all that remains is a face, viewers are able to keenly focus on the features that make each visage highly individualized. Further, the context itself reinforces to observers that this person deserves such intense scrutiny.
Crime Stories also features a vivid selection of vintage news photographs relating to both obscure and notorious moments in criminal history. Among those included are Tom Howard’s historic photograph of the electrocution of Ruth Snyder taken at Sing Sing Prison in 1928. Snyder, a Queens housewife, was sent to the electric chair for the murder of her husband Albert. She was the first woman executed in Sing Sing since 1899, becoming quite famous for her crime. Howard, a Chicago Tribune photographer, was working with the New York Daily News, and shot the photograph from a hidden camera strapped to his ankle. The blurry image became the next day’s front page photograph, providing a jarring look at the way in which the media quickly used crime photography as a means to selling not only papers, but ideologies as well.
Unknown, French. Marius Bourotte, 1929. Gelatin silver print with applied color 11.6 x 16.2 cm. (4 9/16 x 6 3/8 in.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1996 (1996.158.3)
Crime Stories features historic images, such as John Dillinger’s feet in the Chicago morgue (1934), Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on live television (1963), and Patty Hearst captured by bank surveillance cameras (1974). The exhibition also includes works by artists who have drawn inspiration from the criminal underworld including Richard Avedon, Larry Clark, Walker Evans, John Guttmann, Andy Warhol, and Weegee. It total, Crime Stories offers a dynamic look at the space where crime and photography meet, giving us new insights into the ways in which news becomes part of our shared history.
All photos: Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
