Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories (English, German and French Edition)
Kilpatrick (1902^-62) was basically a working stiff who held down two jobs at once to support a growing family. He was a movie projectionist in the mid-1940s in California when he got a still camera and made himself invaluable to insurance companies and the highway patrol as a photographer of auto wrecks and later to theSanta Ana Registeras a news photographer. Dumas' selection of his work concentrates on images of accident and death, including murders and suicides as well as highway fatalities. She speculates that Kilpatrick's pictures may have been influenced by the films noir he saw from the projection booth, but most were taken at night and required the spotlighting that produces their noirish chiaroscuro. In any event, presented one per black-bordered page, they are riveting--ghastly, to be sure, but not repulsive, like Joel Peter Witkin's tableaus featuring cadavers. Instead, they inspire awe, pity, and the humbling acknowledgment of mortality, just as the horrid medieval images of the crucified Christ were intended to do.Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved