Customer Reviews
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 a dissapointment!, Nov 21, 2022
If you are a serious collector of early photos,this is not the book for you.Besides the terrible organization of photo subject and type reference,some of wich have no reference at all,some of the photos would probably be already quite familliar to you,and are all done over in this sepia like tone instead of their true colors.As well,some of them are not quite so early.The text is taken from books of other people who have done great works on crime photogrphy,(Eugenia Parry),and so are the photos.if you want artsy,you might appreciate it.If you want a serious book on early photos of crime or the like,don't waste your money
10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
 Exploring the Dark, Feb 14, 2023
Joel Peter Witkin is long established as a master of the visually bizarre, creating studio photographs that push the envelope of believability to the precipice and then encourage the viewer to accompany the descent. They are manufactured by the artist. But here Witkin has gathered bits of real life that far exceed the contrivances of his own photography. Distorted and leaning toward nauseating as some of these real life photographs from history may be, they are all the more strange because they are Documentation instead of Creation. And who better to compile this odyssey into the dark realm but the man who spends his creative energies devising fabricated scenarios that parallel these photographs? A fascinating survey of just how untameable is this planet we call home........
8 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
Get out of the Way, Sep 20, 2023
While the photographs here were shocking, they were also exploitative. Just because they are old does not lessen the impact of photos of murdered children and freaks of nature. I am not sure what this book wanted to do, but it did not do it well. It is like reading a book version of the trashy Faces of Death video series.
14 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
one word., Feb 9, 2023
daaaaamn
36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
Ecellent, but not for everyone., Jan 11, 2023
Although its the right size, Joel Peter Witkin's Harm's Way is not a coffee table book. Its photographs are thematically grouped from murder victims to medical horrors to the insane, and all the photos are circa 1875 to maybe 1920. These are accompanied by articulate essays explaining why the photos are being published at all insofar as most folks will find them grotesque and not a little disturbing - which is probably just the point. The subjects of the pictures were real people, the bizarre situations were also real. Try and hide as we will, we cannot hide from them. If you like poking about places you shouldn't be, this book is for you. If not, it's not.
|
Cart | 
Based on 7 reviews.