Tag: crime

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Little Portraits

Samuel Little is a serial killer who was convicted of the murders of three women in California between 1987 and 1989 and one woman in Texas in 1994. He serves a lifelong sentence. In the spring of 2018, Little was hoping to move prisons. In exchange for a move, he was willing to talk. He remembers his victims and the killings in great detail. Little provided portraits of many of the women he killed. Some of these portraits have already helped identify victims. In total, Little confessed to ninety killings. Authorities have confirmed thirty-four of them. There are still a number of confessions that remain uncorroborated.
In 2019, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released twenty-six of Little’s portraits of unidentified victims.
2019
digital print, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 64 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
16 €

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Bilderbuch 2.0

Bilderbuch draws on an extensive archive of photographs taken from newspapers, magazines, books etc. that I have been gathering over more than 40 years. A selection from this ongoing collection of printed matter, removed from the original context and presented without any comment, was first published in book form in 2012. Bilderbuch 2.0 is an expanded remix of the book’s first edition.
2017
digital print, colour
21 x 14.8 cm, 144 pages
softcover, perfect bound
100 copies
32 €

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One Day in May

Every time we learn about another gun rampage in the US, people ask the same questions – why did someone kill so many people, what went wrong with that person? In May, 2014 another one of these killing sprees occurred in Santa Barbara, California, claiming seven lives. One Day in May does not ask any of the usual questions but takes a look at the wider context of the event – the other fourty-nine shootings that happened on the same day, starting in Connecticut and ending in California in the course of the day. The Santa Barbara shooting is only one event in an ongoing series; it made international news because of the number of victims. Looking at the local news on any given day may tell us more about the occasional mass shooting than asking the same questions time and again.
2014
digital print, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 124 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
32 € (last copies)

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X Marks the Spot

Dallas, Texas, Dealey Plaza. The site where John F. Kennedy was assassinated is a major tourist magnet. White Xes on the pavement mark the spots where the president was fatally shot – in the middle of a freeway on-ramp. Visitors often wait for a gap in traffic, hurry to one of the Xes, get their photos taken and leave the road before the next cars arrive. Some of those photos end up in online photo sharing sites such as Flickr, with captions along these lines: “I don’t know why I felt the need to stand by the X but judging from everyone else, it would appear to be the thing to do.”
A webcam is positioned in a window on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository, the site where, on November 22, 1963, an assassin allegedly fired the shots that killed Kennedy as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The camera’s perspective exactly matches that of the assassin: it now shoots the tourists shooting their own memorial photos, and we can watch this in real time.
The book combines snapshots taken by tourists at Dealey Plaza with footage from the webcam.
2013
digital print, colour
14.8 x 10.5 cm, 84 pages
softcover, sewn
100 copies
second edition 2014: 100 copies

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X Marks the Spot (2013)

Dallas, Texas, Dealey Plaza. The site where John F. Kennedy was assassinated is a major tourist magnet. White Xes on the pavement mark the spots where the president was fatally shot – in the middle of a freeway on-ramp. Visitors often wait for a gap in traffic, hurry to one of the Xes, get their photos taken and leave the road before the next cars arrive. A webcam is positioned in a window on the sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository, the site where, on November 22, 1963, an assassin allegedly fired the shots that killed Kennedy as the presidential motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. The camera’s perspective exactly matches that of the assassin: it now shoots the tourists shooting their own memorial photos, and we can watch this in real time.
Twenty-one pigment ink prints, 18 x 24 cm on 24 x 30 cm paper each, edition of 3 copies + 1 AP


^ Hollybush Gardens, London November 2016

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Bilderbuch

What do Elizabeth Taylor, a bicycle seat, Carlos the Jackal, a lobster, Silvio Berlusconi, and a toilet brush have in common? Nothing, except that their photographs all ended up in my archive of scanned printed matter gathered from around the world over four decades. Removed from their original news context and presented without any comment, this apparent random, unrelated series of images turns out to be a miscellaneous reflection of popular obsessions, fears and fantasies.
The book was made on the occasion of the Bilderbuch exhibition at Zephyr, Mannheim.
2012 in collaboration with Zephyr, Mannheim
digital print, colour
23 x 16 cm, 120 pages
softcover, sewn
250 copies

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Vierzig Jahre

I have been collecting photographs for forty years. Some ended up in my works, others were discarded, and the rest I preserved in my collection despite not knowing what to do with them. The earliest of these survivors is a series of nineteen portraits reproduced in this book – portraits that have endured four continuous decades of sifting, disposal and preservation. There must be a reason for this.
2011
print on demand, colour
20 x 13 cm, 40 pages
softcover, perfect bound
open edition
12 €

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L.A. Women

In December 2010, Los Angeles Police Department released one hundred and eighty photographs that were found in the possession of a serial murder suspect. All of them are photographs of women. These women may or may not be residents of Los Angeles, they may or may not be prostitutes (as were the women in the investigation). They may or may not be murder victims. We don’t know. We don’t even know whether the arrested suspect took these photographs himself.
Without knowing where the photographs come from, most of them wouldn’t be worth a second glance; for you and me, that is. Of course this is different for friends and family of the women depicted. And it is certainly different for the person who took these pictures. From the testimony of one surviving victim we know that the woman was first photographed, then shot, and then raped before she was dumped in the street.
Most of the women were clearly alive when the photos were taken; some are smiling, some are posing. Some appear to be asleep, they may or may not be sleeping the big sleep. Some of them may have been shot soon after or just before the photographer shot the picture. We don’t know.
It is actually the fact that we don’t know anything – apart from the context where these photographs come from – that makes them so eerie. We want to know more but the pictures don’t tell us. We look at them and they look at us. That’s all there is.
L.A. Women received an honorable mention in the 2011 Photography Book Now competition.
2011
print on demand, colour, uncoated paper
18 x 18 cm, 154 pages
hardcover with dust jacket
open edition
price on application
email orders only
(a slightly different edition of 50 copies with one extra sheet was launched at the 4th International Photobook Festival Kassel in 2011)

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Phantome

Reproductions of police drawings of wanted criminals with an insert list of various offenses that can be cut out and pasted to the picture of your choice.
1992 by Edition Fricke & Schmid
photocopy, b/w
21 x 14.8 cm, 36 pages
softcover
100 copies
ISBN 3 927365 22 X

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Bilderbuch (2011–2019)


^ Bilderbuch at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, 2017


^ Bilderbuch at Zephyr Mannheim, 2012

Unique site-specific print installations based on an ongoing collection of printed matter, removed from the original context and presented without any comment.
Pigment ink prints, 40 x 30 cm each

Bilderbuch 1.0, 120 pages, Berlin/Mannheim 2012
Bilderbuch 1.1: 16 pages in Joachim Schmid e le fotografie degli altri (2012)
Bilderbuch 1.2: 23 pages in The Lazlo Reader: The Art of Remaking. Second Chances (2015)
Bilderbuch 2.0, 144 pages, Berlin 2017
Bilderbuch 2.1: 28 pages in Emic Units #39 (2023)