Black & white scenes of a morbid reality will be presented to the public for the first time, that include bullets, broken windows, sliced hands and bloodstained floors. Plus, although they remind us of film noir films, they are everything but staged.
50 photographs taken by police investigators in Southern California from 1920 to 1960 seem to have an artistic value. They will therefore be exhibited at the art fair of Paramount Pictures Studios the following April, as they are “impregnated” with hard scenes of real life, which bounce between the morbid and the artistic, the fantastic and the realistic. This material is courtesy of LAPD reserve officer Merrick Morton and his wife and photography dealer, Robin Blackman, who managed to save them after a major fire at the LAPD station and to persuade the police officers to preserve them in low temperature, instead of destroying them.
The oldest of these photos, depicting an odious spectacle, whether it is a brutal murder or a sudden suicide, dates from 1920 and their prices range between $325 and $700.
