Harms way: lust and madness, murder and mayhem : a book of photographs

Abstract

Inevitable death and our agony to attain Utopia have made existence a form of pathology. We are left with the secret need for redemption which few of us will understand or witness. This need still lives in acts of love, courage and art. In the images included in this book it is found in the conjoined destinies of artist and subject, phantoms on either side of that curtain we call photography. Implicit in these photographs is the brutal extreme of their purpose and an intimation however distant to their makers that something was manifested beyond the event itself.

Contents

They say I and I : and mean : anybody / Eugenia Parry Janis -- Human beings at night / Rainer Maria Rilke (from The book of images, 1899-1906 -- The Burns Archive / Stanley B. Burns -- Archiving sexuality : the photographic collection of the Kinsey Institute / James Crump -- Psychiatric photography in Victorian England / Aaron H. Esman.