ABSTRACT
In the mid-to-late 1990s Melanie Pullen was in a Los Angeles bookstore when she happened upon Luc Sante’s now seminal book of historical police photographs entitled Evidence (1992). Pullen’s encounter with Evidence inspired her to produce a series of art photographs — High Fashion Crime Scenes — for which she photographed models dressed in ‘high fashion’ labels in corpse-like poses (Figures 1, 2). Her juxtaposition of fashion and death led commentators to admire the ‘rotten prettiness’ of her images.2 The series is a prodigious end to a decade of research,
conceptualisation, and staged productions. Pullen enlisted the help of up to 60 people for each photographic shoot, including CSI film crews, stunt crews, models, and prosthetic and special effects experts. Each shoot resulted in a death scene image, with the series ultimately standing at around 100 images. The scenes are based on actual crime scene images drawn from Pullen’s research at the LA Police Department, the County Coroner’s Office, and other sources, including Sante’s Evidence and tabloid images.3 Therefore, while Pullen’s images reference a range of photographic genres, including landscape photography, fashion photography, and self-portraiture, the most identifiable element of her work stems from its ‘forensic’ aesthetic.4 Given the motivation behind Pullen’s work, clearly this is a self-conscious, purposeful framing. But her series is not out of place amongst contemporary art practices, where the ‘look’ of forensics routinely pervades art and late modern ways of regarding landscapes, suburban plots, and streets. Curators, artists, and museums have been inspired by Sante’s efforts in the New York Municipal Archives, and Evidence now stands as one of the first publications in a proliferate stream of similar
titles presenting police images curated from legal archives the world over, and which have included exhibitions.5
