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Last updated on June 24th, 2017 at 10:16 am
A Chandleresque scene in wartime Sydney.
(From the Justice & Police Museum archives)
Pyjama murder? Does Dan Rather have an alibi?
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2008 04 21 at 12:25 AM • permalink
OK, it’s the wrong era, but it reminds me of Dave Warner’s (from the suburbs) “Big Bad Blood”. There must be loads of Aussie period Noir, but I’ve never read anything else.
Posted by Mr Hackenbacker on 2008 04 21 at 01:17 AM • permalink
Wow!, I was reminded of this famous Pyjama Murder.
The newsreel is well worth watching.
#5 Pogs, I’m old enough to have seen that one in the news. It was very famous at the time.
Tim, I wrongly thought your “chandleresque” link was going to take me to this chandler crime.
Chandler would have rips shreds off that ridiculous academic-style eight-point analysis. Death is ugly and brutal, not surreal.
The image reminded me of a still from a surrealist movie.
How can death remind you of a movie? Of course it has to be ‘surrealist’. You heard that one coming.
It also recalled the work of night photographers Brandt, Weegee and Brassai. Surrealism’s obsession with bodily contortion, irrationality, violence, and nightmare, hovers as a putative presence.
Christ almighty. Murder as post-modern photography-as-art analysis.
- #10
That’s probably where the PRS museum stuff is now. Thanks for the information.All the budding forensic investigators amongst us will be making the effort to visit.The site is interesting, I’m disappointed there’s not more to see there.I think the author of the comment on the picture reads a lot into it. There would have been more evidence, and there’d be a reason to take that particular photograph from that direction…
- Great photo.
“Surreal” is an over-used word, but it applies here.Posted by daddy dave on 2008 04 21 at 06:14 AM • permalink
C’mon people, he is on his back and wearing pyjamas. It’s called sleep.
Posted by surfmaster on 2008 04 21 at 06:28 AM • permalink
I think the closest we have is Roger “The Dodger” Rogerson.
Not as dignifed as Perry Mason, or Harry Callaghan for that matter, but got results.
Apparently…
Chandler would have rips shreds off that ridiculous academic-style eight-point analysis. Death is ugly and brutal, not surreal.
Considering Chandler’s style used lots of lyrical and metaphorical imagery, like:
Here and there a light hung in the darkness, like the last orange.
I think that the very succinct and sensitive analysis of the pajama photograph would have appealed to him.
Mr.Hackenbacker: I don’t know about loads of Aussie noir but the best I’ve ever read is by Sydney-based author, academic and blues guitarist, Peter Doyle. Check out “Amaze Your Friends”, and “The Devil’s Jump”.
And, irony of ironies, he works at the Museum Tim linked to:
He also works as a part time curator at the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney. He curated the exhibition ‘Crimes of Passion’ (2002-2003) and more recently ‘City of Shadows: inner city crime and mayhem, 1912-1948’ (November 2005-February 2007) which examined inner-Sydney in the first half of the twentieth century via police crime and accident scene photographs.
Posted by Abu Chowdah on 2008 04 22 at 05:39 AM • permalink
Reminds of the Police Van that was always a staple of the Perth Royal Show in the 60s. You were supposed to be over 16 to get but being tall I got away with it.
It was a collection of similar photos and exhibits, intended to shock the populace into living a blameless life.
Fascinating, but failed (not with me, I hasten to add!).