Tags
art, beautiful, Carson Daily, Controversial, Crime, Crime Scene Couture, disturbing, fashion, High Fashion Crime Scene, LA photographer, Melanie Pullen, NBC, Photography, reanactments, unique, video, Vintage Crime Scene Photos
I don’t know about you, but the intrigue of crime has been an interest of mine, when i stopped being afraid of the reality of it “happening to me.” I find myself glued to my couch as I watch Dateline, 48 hours, and others with real life footage. I usually do not like reenactments, as you cannot see the true story. But Melanie Pullen, a self-taught LA based photographer, who found her niche in her teens while shooting the earliest shots of The Black Keys and other now famous bands has created a reenactment that I actually think is quite beautiful. She is widely published and well-known as an “envelope pusher” with her controversial work.
I really don’t enjoy Carson Daly, but as i was decompressing from my day at 1:30 am, I was excited to see her segment and automatically decided her work needed to be written about, even more! (Check out Link)
“I’m a selfish person when I create art, I’m creating it for myself…then I have to give it away.” – Melanie Pullen
Her most recent work is a collaboration of vintage crime scene photos , collected from the LA County Coroner’s office, and reenacted into haute couture scenes of women in their time of death. Somehow, in a disturbing and real way, she makes it utterly beautiful. I will spare you the most gruesome shots, but you can always view them in her recently published 128 page book called “High Fashion Crime Scenes.”
My Favorite
Pullen’s goal, in this particular project, was to combine art, passion, and couture into an amazing spread of telling pictures. And she has done it well: Artistically and esthetically.
“Prior to the 1950s the nature of 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 with an eye for composition, lighting, and drama. – From Melanie Pullen’s Bio
That is what she has emulated and successfully done.
Crime is either the outward expression of those who have “a few screws loose” or, crime is that of a passionate response to a need to fulfill, complete, or create a picture that plagues the brain.
I believe crime footage is so telling of the people who commit the deed. A door that opens to reveal why.
Fashion comes in all different shapes and forms and we should not , and WILL NOT box it in. Everything in the artistic mind is open for interpretation. Something may be beautiful to me and ugly or scary to you. That is what makes artists so unique: the difference in the definition of what is pleasing and beautiful.
Look out for her upcoming project called “Haunted” ,The exploration of the moment before death.
