Martin Harlaar, Richard Hengeveld, Jan Pieter Koster & Anne Roos

Intriguingly horrific and beautiful. The juxtaposition between context and image-making in Silent Witnesses is astounding. At first glance the book is an honest document portraying crime scenes in Amsterdam during the early 20th century; but upon further inspection, it is the object of pure beauty and the photographs that inhabit each page are each filled with their own individuality and physical characteristics, from a stolen car to the empty streets of a murder scene.

Christiaan Batelt was the owner of a pharmacy in Amsterdam. The book begins with an essay that covers the extensive history of police photography and the early years of documented crime in the Netherlands. In it there lies a picture, ‘Christiaan Batelt demonstrates how to photograph a dead body. Before the book has even started I am hit by a clear punctum. The dominant human in the photograph seems to overpower the other, his elevated position and tripod placement just missing the deceased hand really tell me that this man is a professional, Bartelt is a photographer, using the medium to provide a completely factual document that would later be presented to accuse the guilty. The many levels of this image (physically and metaphorically) are what really stick with me. The photographer being photographed, who is behind the camera? What do they think of what he is doing? In contrast to the picture that sits next to this one which is contextually miles away.

Of course, there is always the possibility that the deceased in the image is an actor and this completely changes the atmosphere surrounding the photograph and its context.

As the book begins you are greeted with disturbing photographs of dead bodies, blood-stained walls and broken windows. There is no gentle greeting to the sequence. At the time each photograph was taken the photographer probably didn’t even realise that one day their plate would be sitting in a photo book that sits more under the umbrella of an art book than any other genre of book. Within each picture there is more and more to be learnt, the more you look away and look back, something has changed or a small detail within the photograph emerges and presents itself to the viewer.

A cabin trunk sits on the page before the autopsy photographs of a recent murder victim. Stark juxtapositions are a frequent theme throughout this book. As well as the context and contents of each image the print quality and tonality of the plates are something which interests me, how can something so horrific, so gruesome become utterly beautiful? I think that because the images are all monochrome it takes away an aspect of the horror, it makes the images a little less realistic; blood no longer shouts at you from the page, and it has become muddled into the tone of the print.

The aftermath of horrific crimes can be very simply defined with quiet still-life photographs and this book has the ability to allow the viewer to create fictional stories about each diptych, you have the option to use the caption above each image to aid you along in the storytelling throughout the book. Although these photographs were taken nearly 100 years ago, there is a familiarity to them; the objects, clothing and buildings all seem to play on my memories of today’s society, the realisation that these events are still occurring today sits in the back of my head when reading and looking at the pictures in this book.

I came across this photo book in a second-hand market on one of the canals in Amsterdam. I couldn’t help but flick through the pages very quickly when walking around the city that day and I would always stop when reaching a photograph of a body. There is this psychotic fascination within humans to observe the details of a gruesome scene. Why do we do this? Is it to acquire the knowledge so that we make sure it does not happen to us? Is it the beauty within the horrific? Or just a simple passing observation, a comment on the event perhaps?

I can’t help but be drawn into each page of this book. Not only is it an important document in understanding the early uses of photography within society, but it also holds an artistic value not only in the beautiful printing of the book but also in the composing and exposing skill of each photographer in this book.