True Crime / History / Photography
Hardcover, 10.25 x 11.75 inches, 252 pages, over 300 duotone photographs
ISBN: 978-1-57687-463-9
$49.95
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Deadly Intent: Crime & Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive
By Stanley B. Burns, MD
By Sara Cleary-Burns
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A Burns Archive Book
The Burns Archive, known for its 1980s studies of derangement
of the mind and body and photographic histories of
medicine and death, extend that study to crime with Deadly
Intent: Crime & Punishment Photographs from the Burns Archive.
The book is divided into four sections: crime scenes, police
action, punishment, and executions. It is concentrated
between 1890 and 1950, a time when criminals often
admitted their crimes and were quickly punished. Until the
late 1940s, the period from arrest to execution for a capital
offense averaged 33 days. The change in police attitudes
and of the punishment prescribed for criminal behavior is
documented here in iconic photographs.
Unlike many previous works on the subject, this compilation
of crime scenes gives readers a forensic view, offering entire
series of images used by detectives and criminologists. Other
photographs reveal the evolving standards of the American
criminal justice system, from water torture at Sing Sing
prison, whipping posts, penitentiary life, and the notorious
deadly work camps of the South, to executions: hanging, firing
squads, and the electric chair. Only when all the evidence is
presented can justice and humanity be properly served. This
compilation of images, most published here for the first time,
is a valuable new resource for historians and researchers.
Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, a practicing New York City
ophthalmic surgeon, is also an internationally distinguished
photo-historian, author, lecturer, curator, and collector.
Over the last three decades he collected over 800,000
images, including what is perhaps the most comprehensive
private collection of crime, forensic, lynching, prison, and
execution photography. Dr. Burns has published criminology
photographs in collections including Harm’s Way: Lust
& Madness, Murder & Mayhem (Twin Palms, 1994) and
produced the memorial photography collection Sleeping Beauty
(Twelvetrees Press, 1990). In 2006, the Burns Archive
released Patients & Promise: A Photographic History of Mental
and Mood Disorders, presenting photographs of mentally
ill criminals. Dr. Burns has also worked on several
episodes of Autopsy, the critically acclaimed HBO forensic
documentary series.
Sara Cleary-Burns has been involved in the art world for
many years. Since 1985 she has chosen to concentrate on
photography as art, specializing in early hand-colored images
in their original frames, as well as manipulated photographs.
In pursuit of these interests she turned her hand to mounting
and presenting museum exhibitions, such as the highly
successful Forgotten Marriage, which toured throughout the
United States. As an archivist, administrator, fundraiser,
and publicist, she has been involved with some of the major
photographic collections of the United States.
powerHouse Interview with Stanley Burns
powerHouse: What did you collect before photographs?
Stanley Burns: I collected things all my life but they were always historically related. I collected stamps and coins and then high-art European firearms, and I sold that collection to buy my photograph collection. And that was back in the ’70s. I had a big auction at Phillips.
How did you transition to collecting photography?
Someone showed me this picture, and it was a Daguerreotype. It was very valuable. He was another firearms collector, who actually dealt in swords and he said, This is the kind of stuff you should be buying and owning.
It was very expensive and what happened was that I looked up the background on it, but the information that was in books didn’t match what the picture showed. And then I realized that I could say anything that I wanted when I was writing history, but if you had an untouched original photograph, you could then see what the reality was. And not only that, but you could then see other things in the photograph that would not be normally important at the time but a 100 years later. So that’s why I collect photography. It was a form of evidence that was irrefutable.
What was the first collection you purchased?
The first collection that I actually bought were Daguerreotypes, and the second collection was photographs of Victorian India. I started collecting in 1975 and by 1977 I had written my first article. By 1978 Time-Life had picked my collection as the best emerging historic collection and wrote it up in their collector’s encyclopedia.
I recognized at the time that I was able to buy anything that I wanted to, historically. There were very few other people that were interested. I wanted to collect what no one else had. My fields of collecting are crime, medical, war, African American, color photography, and Judaica. I have a lot of everything else, but in those fields, there are very few museums who have as much as I do or as important photographs as I do.
Do you see any relationship between your work as an eye doctor and your work as a photography collector?
You know, the eye as a camera, but I went to medical school and I was the photography editor for our yearbook. And when I was in the public health service serving in the Coast Guard, I took a lot of pictures.
I’ve done a lot of strange things in my life because I always wanted to get as much experience as possible doing everything. Life is so short.
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