Strange Days, Dangerous Nights: Photos from the Speed Graphic Era

Strange Days, Dangerous Nights: Photos from the Speed Graphic Era

Fat men's races and fall-out shelters, murder victims and loose women, cheerleaders and immigrants, celebrities and children in distress were just some of the urban curiosities splashed across the pages of city newspapers during the Speed Graphic era (1930s–1950s). Championed by acclaimed news photographers like Arthur Fellig (a.k.a. Weegee), the Speed Graphic camera produced a new visual style that was as blunt, powerful, and immediate as a left hook. Driven by the desire to fill newspaper pages with sensational images, press photographers shot everything, day and night: automobile accidents, fires, murders, all the cop news that fought for a hot spot on the Front Page. And they covered uncounted numbers of social affairs—pictures called "grip-and-grins" in the trade: school events, sports, celebrities, oddities both of nature and humanity. The photographs in this collection are taken from the files of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the St. Paul Dispatch, and span a period from the nineteen-forties to the mid-sixties. Among the many records of long-forgotten civic functions are shocking crime-scene photographs, a reminder of an era when the country's newspaper photographers—an army of Weegees, equipped with oversized Speed Graphic flash cameras and radios tuned to the police scanners—regularly provided readers with lurid coverage of violent crimes and spectacular accidents. There is a harsh intimacy to these photographs, which bring us as close as possible to car-crash victims, suicides, and mass murderers confessing their crimes. But the welter of detail in the pictures—the seamed stockings of a murder victim, the huddle of bystanders after a bar shooting—provides a nuanced portrait of a Midwestern city and of American culture at midcentury. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker "A collection of vivid and sometimes spectacular photographs that throw new light on the not-so-distant past, a place that is a bit like home, a bit like a movie, and a bit like another planet. It is heartening to find such stuff so well preserved and so expertly annotated.? -- Luc Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York, Evidence, and The Factory of Facts John Sandford is the pen name of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, New York Times bestselling novelist, and amateur photographer John Camp. His books include The Hanged Man’s Song, Hidden Prey, and Naked Prey. Used Book in Good Condition