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Title: Car Crashes & Other Sad Stories by Jennifer Dumas, Mell Kilpatrick ISBN: 3822864110 Publisher: TASCHEN America Llc Pub. Date: 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.2
Rating: 4
Summary: A Book You'll Never Forget
Comment: Mell Kirkpatrick's photographs in this book are like none I have seen before, and I have seen many searing, tragic photos of wars and natural catastrophes in my lifetime. Taken primarily in Orange County, Southern California during the late 40's and 50's, these sad photographic tales of auto crash victims require no words; as you page through this book, you feel tremendous sympathy for the hapless victims, and a hundred questions come to your mind. I do not recommend this powerful photographic study to the weak-hearted or the squeamish. But if stark and disturbing death scenes do not bother you, this is your book. May I also suggest you play the last movement of Gustav Mahler's 9th Symphony while looking through this book to heighten the experience.
Rating: 5
Summary: Deadly traffic.
Comment: I would agree with another reviewer who said the black and white format makes these photos matter-of-fact and less gruesome. With over two hundred pictures in the book, between sixty and seventy show bodies, the rest are autos in various states of demolition caused by accidents.
The flimsiness of the Detroit's product is evident in photo after photo, page 126 shows a car door, seperated from the rest of the vehicle and three-quarters wrapped round a telegraph pole. There are several car/train accident photos and the trains seem to have no damage at all, the cars are crumpled like paper.
As these photos were primarily statements of record for insurance companies and the police Kilpatrick worked out the best exposure and camera angle and stuck to it, so the book reflects his style, if it was a collection of accident photos by many photographers it would not be so interesting. This is one man's professional work in the forties and fifties in southern California.
The landscape all-black format of the book helps the photos stand out but I have yet to work out the meaning of the small graphic item at the bottom of each page. Tachen are to be applauded in publishing a book of photos (clearly not to everyones taste) that normally would not be seen.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Lesson in Safety, Consumer Protection Regulation, and $$$
Comment: Many other reviewers of this book have expressed shock and horror at the gruesome images contained in this book. One reviewer was appalled that this book could be found within easy reach of children and adults who may find the material objectionable. In my opinion, this book should be required "reading" if that is a proper term given the all photograph content. Why? Because it shows how much all of us as consumers are at the mercy of those who manufacture the goods that we need. Because when one looks beyond the severely mangled bodies and surveys the damage to the actual vehicles, one thing is amazingly clear: the damage involved is high, but the speeds involved in these wrecks on average is low. Indeed, these wrecks that ended up in tragedy would hardly cause a scrape to the modern driver because of advances in safety technology. One reviewer commented about the flimsiness of the Detroit product, but that's only the end of the story. How many people alive today even remember that cars didn't always come with seatbelts, and that Detroit fought the seatbelt lobby brought by consumers for years by arguing that it was safer for a driver to be thrown from the vehicle than to be strapped in to it during a wreck? These drivers are killed and disfigured over and over again not because they didn't wear their seatbelt, but because there wasn't even a seatbelt installed in the car. However, as crazy as it sounds, it may have been better in those days not to be strapped in. All you have to do is read as a companion to this book the famous "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader to know why. As, Nader explains, and this book shows, many of the people in this era were killed when the metal steering wheel hub was thrown by collision impact like a sledgehammer into the driver's head and face. Thus, no seatbelt would help a person in that situation but to hold them in place while death comes, er, knocking. Thus, because steering columns were so dangerous, as Detroit knew, they conveniently used that fact to argue against seatbelts rather than change the product. It seems that Detroit had manufactured a huge inventory of these straight columns and wanted to use them up before trying to change to a collapsible column. Thankfully, Detroit now manufactures collapsible steering columns and steering wheels made of softer materials and seatbelts. Why? Not because they wanted to--they cried that it would cost too much to change the design even after they used the stockpile--but because they were forced to by the government. Before we as consumers chalk up a victory, consider this: most of the safety equipment found in today's modern cars was designed and viable back in the 1930s--things like padding, crush zones, safety tires, etc. Imagine how safe cars could be today if Detroit hadn't wasted forty years of progress fighting safety in the name of increased profits for the automakers. The same goes for pollution controls. Unfortunately, many of the governmental controls in that area keep getting watered down, and the quest for alternative fuel is dead in the road at the hands of the auto industry lawyers. Many of the modern alternative and hybrid cars are using technology that has been around since the 1940s. Thus, it is new and outdated at the same time. Sixty years of progress may have resulted in a real fossil fuel alternative by now, but we'll never know. Furthermore, if we had real fossil fuel alternatives, the Bush family, that earns its money from oil imports, and its administration would have no interest in Saddam or Iraq because we wouldn't need oil. But before I digress, I think that everyone should look at this book and consider that if it weren't for lobbying Congress for governmental controls, we could easily be driving cars with this same level of safety, and ending up the same way. Still don't believe me? Just look at mortality data from countries that still don't impose such controls--or just check out the cars. Mexico is a good example, given the huge amount of safe cars that are built there for the U.S. market, there isn't even safety glass installed in cars built for domestic use.
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Title: Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook by Jack Huddleston, Sean Tejaratchi, Katherine Dunn ISBN: 0922915296 Publisher: Feral House Pub. Date: 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: New York Noir: Crime Photos from the Daily News Archive by William Hannigan, Luc Sante ISBN: 0847821722 Publisher: Rizzoli Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Shots in the Dark: True Crime Pictures by Gail Buckland, Harold Evans ISBN: 0821227750 Publisher: Bulfinch Press Pub. Date: 2001 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Old Car Wrecks: And the Vehicles at Accident Scenes, 1920s to 1960s by Ron Kowalke ISBN: 0873415108 Publisher: Krause Publications Pub. Date: 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Muerte!: Death in Mexican Popular Culture by Harvey Stafford, Adam Parfrey ISBN: 0922915598 Publisher: Feral House Pub. Date: 15 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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