Melanie Pullen: "High Fashion" Crime Scene Photography

A little bit jealous and of course curious, I came across photographer Melanie Pullen today. Melanie seems to have churned out some beautifully haunting photographs on point with something that is at once shocking and ethereal. While they may be more easy on the eyes than original (so many have gone this route before her), they are certainly entertaining to peek at. Though she's especially found her groove in the examples which invite more interpretation and don't quite scream "dead woman".

Here's a bit of Melanie's bio from her site: "Self-taught and raised in a family of photojournalists, publishers and artists, she began the present project after seeing a copy of Luc Sante's book Evidence (1914-1919) about crime scene photos from the New York Police Department. While the disturbing stories behind the pictures intrigued Pullen, she was more interested in the minute details: the material that made up the images and told a story. Prior to the mid-1950s, the nature of the criminal photographs was fundamentally different from their present, clinical form. Given the complexity of cameras earlier in the century, most crime scene photographers had both artistic and professional experience...Inspired by such images, Pullen conducted extensive research in the LAPD archives that yielded a wealth of vintage sources to work with." Above are some of my favorites.

Recommended: Eugene Atget, Alexander Gardner, Jacob Riis and Arhtur Fellig