crime scene | Claes Gellerbrink's Blog

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death is New York-based photographer Corinne May Botz’s exploration of eighteen miniature crime scene models constructed by Chicago heiress and criminologist Frances Glessner Lee, who is said to have revolutionized crime scene investigation. She built the models in the 1940s and 50s and they were used to train crime scene investigators, who would have 90 minutes to analyze the scene. They depict real crime scenes and are incredibly detailed—”shades can be raised and lowered, mice live in the walls, stereoscopes work, whistles blow and pencils write.” Botz adds a level of intimacy to the miniatures in the way she shoots, almost as if we are inside the spaces—she intends for us to lose our “sense of proportion and experience the large in the small.” Botz has spent seven years on the project, making over 100 photographs of the models while extensively researching and writing about Lee, who she considers “her collaborator.” The work and writing was published into a book in 2004. She says of the project: My writing explores how Lee’s experience of domestic space informed her creations. Lee followed the role prescribed for her as an upper-class woman, but domestic life never suited her. The houses where she lived were a place of refuge, personal expression, and pride, but they were also a source of disempowerment and anxiety. While she was unhappy with the roles she was forced into as a woman, she maintained assumptions about a woman’s place in the home. Interestingly, she advanced in a male dominated field by co-opting the feminine tradition of miniatures. The models undermine the notion of the home as a safe haven and reveal it to be a far more complex sphere. All of the models depict lower middle class interiors, and the majority of victims are women who suffered violent deaths in the home. Taken from Feature Shoot

All images © Corinne May Botz

Perhaps we have all processed a question in certain love relationships: Could we be a victim of violence or perform an act of violence against a loved one out of our immense capacity to feel jealousy, anger, rage, and desperation in a moment of extreme emotion? These photographs allow for the viewer to entertain the idea that this situation could involve anyone of us. My past work in forensic photography, both photographing crime-scenes and documentation for DNA collection, led me to this project. Evidence is a group of photographs taken at homes where familial homicides have occurred. Long after the struggles have ended in these spaces, despite the cleaning, repainting and subsequent re-habitation of these homes, the “Blue Star” solution activates the physical memory of blood through its contact with the remaining DNA proteins on the walls. The black and white images are long exposures – from ten minutes to one hour – with minimal ambient night light pouring in from the crevices of windows and doors, capturing the physical presence of blood as a lurid glow. The color images were taken upon arrival at each home in which there were approximately 140 different visited locations across the U.S. These photographs are evidence that I was physically present at the homes that I researched. They represent the mystery inside a box that is unattainable in a physical sense. Each image title is a list of the murder weapons used, with-holding names and the gory details of the events. The crime scene is presented on two levels; it is both an accurate, tragic, and dramatic transcription of the event and a mysterious backdrop onto which one can project their imagination.—Angela Strassheim

New York-based Angela Strassheim started out as a forensic photographer before switching gears to fine art photography. She received her MFA from Yale in 2003 and her work has exhibited widely including the 2006 Whitney Biennial and Musee d’ Elysee 50-reGeneration exhibition. Taken from Feature Shoot

All images © Angela Strassheim