Murder most foul, just picture it

 

Who would have thought that such a grisly subject could produce such a fascinating book? Doctor Drew Gray reveals, in a very readable way, more than two hundred murders committed by the usual suspects in Europe, America and Australia though a few actually got away with it. The illustrated Introduction sets the scene for the way the police solved these murders, initially in a very haphazard way without the benefit of crime scene photos, fingerprints, forensics or even a detective. Between 1850 and 1910 rapid advances in technology (for example: blood splatter analysis was available in 1895) allowed the police and the courts to improve conviction rates.

Obviously, the well-known murderers are included Jack the Ripper and Hawley Crippen in London, Bill Quantrill and his Raiders in Lawrence, Kansas, Ned Kelly in Victoria, Australia but most of the killers in the book, though achieving press notoriety at the time come across as either corrupt or very ordinary individuals who lacked the intelligence to get away with their crimes. The copy reveals their crime, trial and conviction in great detail.

What makes this book come alive for me are the hundreds of illustrations (730). Engravings or photos of the murderer and victims, historical engravings by press artists who imagined how the murder was committed and the front pages of newspapers they appeared on, crime scene photos, interesting contemporary floor plans of the crime scene with a red silhouette of the body and obviously plenty of maps which all have keyed references to the places connected to the murder. All the images and copy are presented in very attractive page layouts with an historical feel because all the captions are in capital letters similar to how they would have appeared in the press over a century ago.

On the street where you live

 The photos in this book are a prequel to Szabo's 2003 title Teenage which featured the growing youth of Malverne High School, Long Island, New York (where he taught photography). Hometown reveals the typical suburbs that teenagers lived in though there are only three taken in Malverne, the others are all in the eastern US, especially New York.

The thirty-eight photos were taken between 1973 and 1980 and all exterior shots of tidy timber frame houses mostly photographed from the sidewalk with the usual neat lawns, parked cars and the occasional person working in the garden or children playing. An interesting collection of suburban architecture but not really comparable to Bill Owens's now classic Suburbia photobook taken in the seventies of Livermore, California with some exteriors but mostly concentrating on interior shots and the people who lived in this suburban sprawl of San Francisco.

The landscape shape of Hometown works well with most of the photos on a right-hand  page facing a blank left, unfortunately the very brief captions are all on one of the back pages. Excellent printing by Damiani with a 200 screen on a matt art paper.

A classic revisited

The back pages of this book has an excellent ten page illustrated essay by Cynthia Young describing how Capa's book of war photos was originally published in 1938. Over the years it has achieved a sort of cult status and the few copies that come onto the market are alarmingly expensive. Odd really because the original edition (at $2.50) from New York publishers Covici-Friede was a very poor production with cheap paper and low grade printing. This new edition from Damiani is vastly superior. The layout and typography, by photographer Andre Kertesz, is identical to the original but the photos have been scanned from the Robert Capa Collection prints held by the International Center of Photography and printed with a three hundred screen.

The book records the first year of the Spanish Civil War with 148 photos but not all by Capa, twenty-four are by his girl friend and possibly the first female photojournalist, Gerda Taro, killed on the front line in July 1937 and thirteen by Chim (David Seymour).  The perspective is from the Spanish Republican position fighting the fascist General Franco and obviously the book doesn't cover Franco's victory in 1939. The pictures capture the life of civilians attempting to make the best of it despite the bombing and a lack of food while the republican forces struggle against superior odds. 

The photos by Capa, who was only twenty-four, capture the military action and death in a very direct way, making these images the first of a new style of conflict reportage, which was picked up by picture agencies and weekly current affairs  magazines in Europe and America. 

This is the second historical photobook published by Damiani this year, earlier they published Weegee's Naked city, a book similar to Death in the making because the original publication was of very poor quality. I hope they continue to re-publish classic photobooks from past decades.