Evidence

"These 55 raw, stark photos of the dead—victims of murder or suicides—are both fascinating and horrifying . . . [a] highly original piece of social history." —Library Journal

Following Low Life, Lucy Sante's acclaimed evocation of the underside of New York City's history, Evidence is an investigation into the mysteries of crime, death, and photography that only this brilliant and original writer could conduct.


In one sense Evidence is a picture book—a collection of 55 evidence photographs taken by the New York City Police Department between 1914 and 1918. These are startling images, some brutal, some poetic, and all possessed of a strange and spectral beauty.


Lucy Sante minutely examines these pictures of crime scenes and draws them out by every possible means: speculating about the lives and deaths depicted; discussing the progress of the forensic use of photographs and the mission of photography itself; and, where possible, reconstructing the events that led up to these frozen terminal images. Evidence is many things at once: aesthetic object, historical and sociological document, mystery novel, memento mori, and time machine.

"A haunting collection." —Publishers Weekly