…of the Justice & Police Museum
Posted in 1940s, City of shadows, Negative Archive, crime scenes on Feb 5th, 2010
A window in the upstairs bedroom rattles in its frame, and the shamus knows that his enemies are coming for him. It’s a gentle but potent image, as though the house itself had taken a sharp breath. It’s from Dashiell Hammett’s story, the ‘House on Turk Street’. It replays one of the oldest [...]
Posted in crime scenes on Aug 28th, 2008
FP08 0189 004
At various times over the last few months, I’ve been up in the museum loft, with Museum Studies intern Veronica Kooyman, poring over crime scene negatives from the 1950s. As a result of this experience my vision of that decade has been seriously revised. In Australian historiography, the 1950s are portrayed as an [...]
Posted in crime scenes on Apr 30th, 2008
Domestic violence shocks us for a number of understandable reasons. Not least because the home, usually a place of shelter and love, becomes cruelly violated, turned into a site of moral disaster by its touch. And as familiar as I have become with the raw and uncensored evidence of wrongdoing the archive is so full [...]
Posted in crime scenes on Mar 4th, 2008
I found this surreal and somber glass plate negative several months ago and immediately set it aside for digital scanning. I discuss some of the thoughts the image provoked below.
The discovery of this image triggered a powerful reaction. I felt stunned. There is the illusion of motion in the photograph. The flash creates shadow [...]