( 6 reviews )
-
Posted: Jun 4 2008
It wasn't as detailed as Death Scenes but still gives it a great run for the money. I'd recommend it for anyone who is fascinated with forensics. If given the chance, I would still buy it again.
-
Posted: Oct 15 2007
If you are entertained by the disturbing, this book is great for keeping your sick mind entertained and your idle hands out of entrails. I would also recommend this book to anyone who isn't afraid to look through the eyes of a crime photographer of times past and appreciate the gall it took to actually take some of these pictures. The text in this book is not that fantastic, but it would be very hard to find words more interesting and memorable than the faces in these photographs. So...jeah...good (picture) book.
-
Posted: Jun 26 2007
"Shots in the Dark"is a book of crime-related photographs...Many of them are quite explicit and full of gore..I cannot for the life of me understand why the two people responsible for this volume,so-called"photo historian"Gail Buckland,and"authority"on photography Harold Evans seem to think that we require thier windy ramblings in order to "understand"the"meanings"behind these pictures..I mean,really !Is it that hard to understand,for example,that the woman pictured on page 50 is dead,and was the victim of a murderer?Not that the captions are unwelcome...no...it is the essay work,especially the stuff written by Evans,that grates..Buckland likes to publish books which feature photographs of the dead,the more grotesque and mutiliated the better...In her earlier volume,entitled"Looking at Death" she features a picture of the mutiliated corpse of Benito Mussolini and his galpal Clara Pettachi after they had been lowered from the beam in the town square where they had been hung by thier feet after execution...Il Duce's face is horrible to behold,and yet Buckland rhapsodises about the"meaning"of this picture,as if it has any apart from shock value and/or historical content...I cannot help but think that most who buy that book,or "shots in the dark"will mainly do so to be shocked or titilliated...a few will do so for the historical aspect...a very very few will do so in order to be helpled by either Buckland or Evans to grasp the alledged"meanings"associated with these pictures.. As mentioned earlier,the text by Evans is especially annoying...Evans apparently sees some cosmic meaning in these pictures..A picture of cops arresting someone...a pair of 1920s men who fell,or were pushed down an elevator shaft..By golly,if we look hard enough we can discern the secrets of the universe in these pictures,or so Evans seems to imply...BALDERDASH ! There has recently been a spate of such books,which would suggest that the public is perhaps tired of the fake gore,blood and guts to be had on both the big and the little screens,and wants to look at something real...Maybe ,like the long ago romans,we yearn for admission to the arena,where some real gladiators can kill one another,or some real christians can be eaten alive for our pleasure,and ,for most of us,these pictures take the place of the afore-mentioned entertainments?... If you want some explicit real-life photographs,many involving murder and torture,then this book will fill the bill...but if you want the answer to the meaning of life,or even what these pictures are supposed to"mean",go somewhere else,because Buckland and Evans haven't got a clue.
