An incredible and utterly unique historical document. This book contains selections from the photographic collection of one Mell Kilpatrick, a news photographer from South California who relentlessly pursued his profession during the 40s and 50s, capturing images from the plentiful crime scenes and in particular automobile collisions that came his way. Kilpatrick was an obsessive witness to the effects of the post-war explosion of car culture in California, and through his lens he repeatedly viewed the fatal consequences of speed. technology and reckless abandon. His work might have remained lost and unknown, sealed away in his locked darkroom, untouched since his death in 1961, if it hadn't been brought to light by collector and dealer Jennifer Dumas, who Found the 5,000 negatives and realised she'd stumbled upon something very special. Although he covered other 'stories' apart from crashes, including shots of everyday life in the small towns he visited, it is the roadside images that dominate the collection. They are an unsparing archive of human tragedy. Picture after picture unveils yet another tableau of disaster with infinite variations -- the fragile shells of cars collapsed and upended, corpses hidden or fully revealed, stoic cops and laughing bystanders dealing in different ways with the reality of sudden death. It is this combination of the banal or ordinary and the appalling horror of the moment of impact that makes Kilpatrick's work a Fascinating experience.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Kilpatrick (1902^-62) was basically a working stiff who held down two jobs at once to support a growing family. He was a movie projectionist in the mid-1940s in California when he got a still camera and made himself invaluable to insurance companies and the highway patrol as a photographer of auto wrecks and later to the Santa Ana Register as a news photographer. Dumas' selection of his work concentrates on images of accident and death, including murders and suicides as well as highway fatalities. She speculates that Kilpatrick's pictures may have been influenced by the films noir he saw from the projection booth, but most were taken at night and required the spotlighting that produces their noirish chiaroscuro. In any event, presented one per black-bordered page, they are riveting--ghastly, to be sure, but not repulsive, like Joel Peter Witkin's tableaus featuring cadavers. Instead, they inspire awe, pity, and the humbling acknowledgment of mortality, just as the horrid medieval images of the crucified Christ were intended to do. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Aesthetics of Disaster,
By
This review is from: Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories (English, German and French Edition) (Hardcover)
Ordinarily I might be loath to recommend a collection of car-crash photos--complete with bodies of victims--yet Mell Kilpatrick's Car Crashes exists in a realm far removed from exploitation and even, ultimately, from horror. Kilpatrick lived and worked in Orange County, California, and took up photography around 1950, at age 47. He quickly came to specialize in images of traffic accidents, which he sold for profit to insurance companies. He was making a living and performing a service. Gradually, though, the aesthetics and other implications of what he was shooting superseded commerce and the insurance-company connection. He wanted to shoot for art's sake. Armed with a police scanner and willing to leap from his bed when one of his many police or trooper friends phoned in the middle of the night, Kilpatrick continued to photograph the miserable results of speed, drinking, foolishness, and just plain bad luck.The images are resonant for numerous reasons. First, like the great train photographer Winston O. Link, Kilpatrick shot in black and white and mainly at night. Like Link, he used a heavy flash that illuminated the scenes in searing, deep-focus detail. The images seem to rise from the page. They have weight and an uncanny dimensionality. Second, the fact that the images date from the late forties and early fifties provides a cultural interest that is undeniably nostalgic--you're interested in the now-vintage cars (including their shocking lack of safety features) and the hand-lettered signs that announce hot dog stands and gas stations, and in the baggy-hip wardrobes of victims and onlookers. The images also are horrifying, and because we persist in regarding America's immediate postwar years as sunny and optimistic (particularly in Killpatrick's Southern California, where all good things seemed possible), the photos demonstrate the essential misapprehension that underlies that belief. Third, the numerous images that have dead bodies as their visual and visceral points of focus provide more insight into the bleak finality of death than paragraphs of metaphysical musing. You don't feel sorry for the victims as much as you are embarrassed for them. Killpatrick has made you a witness to something indescribably private. The people are clearly, irrevocably dead, and captured in an unpretty sort of serenity: heads fallen backward, mouths agape, noses bloodied. Their bodies are hurled back from the misshapen steering wheels that crushed their chests and burst their aeortas; recumbent against a shattered side window; trapped and contorted in some impossible space where the engine or dash panel should be; or flung, doll-like, into the back seat or onto the ground. Finally, Killpatrick's images are profoundly artful. He had a flair for finding just the right angle, the frame within the frame, the perfect patterns of light and dark. With this book, the heretofore unknown Killpatrick vaults to prominence as a visual artist. In time, Killpatrick won a job as a staff photographer with an Orange County newspaper. The book's ancillary images are some of that work, which ranges from messy scenes of murder and suicide to boilerplate shots of picnics and ladies' clubs. Jennifer Dumas provides insightful commentary at the beginning and end of the book, which is almost certainly the most unusual in my collection, and another gem from Taschen, perhaps the most interesting and purposely provocative publisher in the world. Production quality is peerless, with heavy coated stock, smart art direction, and impeccable photo reproduction. Although (as the cliche goes) not for the squeamish, Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories will intrigue anyone who appreciates fine documentary photography, and who has given serious thought to the mortality and frailness of form that define us all.
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Book You'll Never Forget,
By Michael Moore (Chino Hills, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories (English, German and French Edition) (Hardcover)
Mell Kirkpatrick's photographs in this book are like none I have seen before, and I have seen many searing, tragic photos of wars and natural catastrophes in my lifetime. Taken primarily in Orange County, Southern California during the late 40's and 50's, these sad photographic tales of auto crash victims require no words; as you page through this book, you feel tremendous sympathy for the hapless victims, and a hundred questions come to your mind. I do not recommend this powerful photographic study to the weak-hearted or the squeamish. But if stark and disturbing death scenes do not bother you, this is your book. May I also suggest you play the last movement of Gustav Mahler's 9th Symphony while looking through this book to heighten the experience.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Show it to your teenagers.,
By
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This review is from: Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories (English, German and French Edition) (Hardcover)
Before my stepdaughter went off to her first driving class, I showed her this book. I think it made an impression. Makes you think about the responsibilty and risks you assume when you get behind the wheel.
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