Customer Reviews

Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories (English, German and French Edition)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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 Gradually, though, the aesthetics and other implications of what he was shooting superseded commerce and the insurance-company connection.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.

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.

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.

Many other reviewers of this book have expressed shock and horror at the gruesome images contained in this book. One reviewer was appalled that this book could be found within easy reach of children and adults who may find the material objectionable. In my opinion, this book should be required "reading" if that is a proper term given the all photograph content. Why? Because it shows how much all of us as consumers are at the mercy of those who manufacture the goods that we need. Because when one looks beyond the severely mangled bodies and surveys the damage to the actual vehicles, one thing is amazingly clear: the damage involved is high, but the speeds involved in these wrecks on average is low. Indeed, these wrecks that ended up in tragedy would hardly cause a scrape to the modern driver because of advances in safety technology. One reviewer commented about the flimsiness of the Detroit product, but that's only the end of the story. How many people alive today even remember that cars didn't always come with seatbelts, and that Detroit fought the seatbelt lobby brought by consumers for years by arguing that it was safer for a driver to be thrown from the vehicle than to be strapped in to it during a wreck? These drivers are killed and disfigured over and over again not because they didn't wear their seatbelt, but because there wasn't even a seatbelt installed in the car. However, as crazy as it sounds, it may have been better in those days not to be strapped in. All you have to do is read as a companion to this book the famous "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader to know why. As, Nader explains, and this book shows, many of the people in this era were killed when the metal steering wheel hub was thrown by collision impact like a sledgehammer into the driver's head and face. Thus, no seatbelt would help a person in that situation but to hold them in place while death comes, er, knocking. Thus, because steering columns were so dangerous, as Detroit knew, they conveniently used that fact to argue against seatbelts rather than change the product. It seems that Detroit had manufactured a huge inventory of these straight columns and wanted to use them up before trying to change to a collapsible column. Thankfully, Detroit now manufactures collapsible steering columns and steering wheels made of softer materials and seatbelts. Why? Not because they wanted to--they cried that it would cost too much to change the design even after they used the stockpile--but because they were forced to by the government. Before we as consumers chalk up a victory, consider this: most of the safety equipment found in today's modern cars was designed and viable back in the 1930s--things like padding, crush zones, safety tires, etc. Imagine how safe cars could be today if Detroit hadn't wasted forty years of progress fighting safety in the name of increased profits for the automakers. The same goes for pollution controls. Unfortunately, many of the governmental controls in that area keep getting watered down, and the quest for alternative fuel is dead in the road at the hands of the auto industry lawyers. Many of the modern alternative and hybrid cars are using technology that has been around since the 1940s. Thus, it is new and outdated at the same time. Sixty years of progress may have resulted in a real fossil fuel alternative by now, but we'll never know. Furthermore, if we had real fossil fuel alternatives, the Bush family, that earns its money from oil imports, and its administration would have no interest in Saddam or Iraq because we wouldn't need oil. But before I digress, I think that everyone should look at this book and consider that if it weren't for lobbying Congress for governmental controls, we could easily be driving cars with this same level of safety, and ending up the same way. Still don't believe me? Just look at mortality data from countries that still don't impose such controls--or just check out the cars. Mexico is a good example, given the huge amount of safe cars that are built there for the U.S. market, there isn't even safety glass installed in cars built for domestic use.

I was waiting for my flight leaving Las Vegas and entered a Borders. I was searching through the store and found this book for $2.99. When I started looking at it I realized that all the accidents were from my area, Orange County California, I thought that was neat. I actually bought the book for the pictures. I am a criminal justice major and a lot of these pictures are very good forensic photos for the time. It is very educational to look at them so you can pic out the flaws of the investigations, and also the positive points of the investigation.

Not as gruesome as death scenes - but still interesting. Espescially if you are from the orange county, Ca. area where all of these pictures are taken. It's really funny to see places like Anaheim covered with Orange groves in every direction and other places looking like a desert when the area is so developed now. It lacks the benefit of a focused narration (like Katherine Dunn's electrifying introduction to Death Scenes) but is interesting nevertheless. What happens when you don't use a seatbelt? Buy this book and see for yourself.

Well, Where to start? The book was very well put together and even in hard cover to make sure it last longer than the lives that were taken in the pictures inside of it's binding. I bought it after buying "Vintage Car Wrecks" by Rusty Herlocher, which only shows smashed up, demolished cars by themselves in neat chapters organized in decades of the cars. Boy, was I in for a surprise!
I have never witnessed such real-life horror, and as one rater said, "just in case you didn't get enough with the fatal car crashes, he throws in some photos of suicides, homocides, and dead streetpeople." I don't know whether to love it or hate it. I think the first time you read it, it GRIPS you and pulls you in, I found myself flipping the pages faster to see the next picture, probably the last seen of these poor souls and their ride that transported them out from this realm of life. The photographic quality is remarkable, especially for the era(1930's) that these were taken but I feel embarrased for the victims IN the book, for one even defecated on himself to add insult to injury(literally). I must feel that a controversial book as "Car Crashes and Other Sad Stories" CANNOT be blamed for the gruesome pictures you see- one reader said it should have a warning, the book DOES, it's called the TITLE. The title makes the expectations CRYSTAL clear, there is NO happy ending here, folks. Really, it is no worse than the typical movies that are shown on TV these days. I think the more that you view the book, the more you like it. The book really grows on you and each time you view it, you see more detail that you might not have seen the times before. I'd give it two thumbs up for detail, uniqueness, and power, as it truly grabs you and pulls you in.
If you are weak-stomached or not into the study of photography, forensics, or just "get off on gore", don't bother to check it out. This was a great deal to me, for $4.00 for a hardcover book of this kind with 200 high resolution photos, if nothing else, it shows why no one should ever ride without a safety belt and furthermore, why no one should EVER try to beat a train. Heck, if I saw this as part of my driver's education class, I'd think twice before I took some of the risk a 15 year old takes. I imagine this book would contain 1000's of images instead of a mere 200 if they had cell phones to distract them in the 1930's. Hey maybe someone should START one of wrecks caused by cellphones mixed with driving- "car crashes and other sad stories, their LAST call". Back to this book though. I say Check it out, if you DARE.....

This is the perfect book for the ambulance chaser in all of us: a collection of car crash photos from the 40's and 50's. There's something deeply tragic about these stark black and white images of destruction. It's fascinating to try and piece together these shattered lives from the scant clues available - the letters strewn beside a well-dressed corpse, the cans of beer strewn from an overturned and demolished car - or, if you're morbid like moi, you might try and figure out exactly how the bodies came to lie in those odd positions. Of course, in these days prior to seat belts, bodies flew every which way, so the variations are really quite amazing.

It was interesting to look at the photos in this book. However it wasn't as good as many of the other photo books out there that a person could buy. I would recommend that a person go to the bookstore and look at it while there. That way you could look at a book that is interesting, but not good enough to buy.

I'll give it a straight down the middle 3 stars. Some people will think less, others more.

I would agree with another reviewer who said the black and white format makes these photos matter-of-fact and less gruesome. With over two hundred pictures in the book, between sixty and seventy show bodies, the rest are autos in various states of demolition caused by accidents.

The flimsiness of the Detroit's product is evident in photo after photo, page 126 shows a car door, seperated from the rest of the vehicle and three-quarters wrapped round a telegraph pole. There are several car/train accident photos and the trains seem to have no damage at all, the cars are crumpled like paper.

As these photos were primarily statements of record for insurance companies and the police Kilpatrick worked out the best exposure and camera angle and stuck to it, so the book reflects his style, if it was a collection of accident photos by many photographers it would not be so interesting. This is one man's professional work in the forties and fifties in southern California.

The landscape all-black format of the book helps the photos stand out but I have yet to work out the meaning of the small graphic item at the bottom of each page. Tachen are to be applauded in publishing a book of photos (clearly not to everyones taste) that normally would not be seen.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.