UPPER EAST SIDE — A 12-year-old farm boy who murdered his sisters, a vagrant preacher who conspired with his mistress to poison their spouses and a kidnapped woman who joined her captors to rob a bank.
These criminals from history's past and more will be featured in a collection of mug shots and crime photography depicting notorious and obscure cases dating back to the 1850s through the 1970s as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's upcoming exhibit "Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play."
Beginning March 7, visitors will get an in-depth look at photographs that were normally reserved for police work — including a study of gangster John Dillinger's feet in a Chicago morgue in 1934 after he died in a police shootout, as well as a security camera image of Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and then joined them in a bank heist in 1974.
The collection also features news photographs and posters relating to some of history's most high-profile cases, such as an image of Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, and a wanted poster for the capture of President Lincoln's murders and a portrait of Lewis Powell, who attempted to murder the then-Secretary of State, William Seward.
A section of the exhibit will be dedicated solely to the mug shot and identification system that was created by a French criminologist, Alphonse Bertillon, including 60 mug shots of suspected French anarchists in the late 1800s that Bertillon took himself, according to Beth Saunders, the curatorial assistant at The Met.
The Met will also pull from its archives' art photography that was inspired by the gruesome or upsetting nature of crime photographs, such as Andy Warhol's "Electric Chair," Richard Avedon's portrait of killer Dick Hickock, whose rampage was chronicled in Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," and artist Larry Clark's "Armed Robbers, Oklahoma City, 1975."
The exhibit, which will run through July 31, will also be available to view through the museum's website and social media with the hashtags #CrimeStories and #MetOnPaper100.
