Monday, November 28, 2011

[214] Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death


De cuando en vez se mencionan estas miniaturas donde se reproducen en detalle escenas de crimen para entrenar a los nuevos agentes forenses.  Habia visto un articulo en Details de varios a/nos atras donde supe que esto existia.  Armar maquetas es interesante...cuando le pones una historia.

Este articulo me recordo lo impresionante e interesante de conceptualizar escenas de crimen como si fuera una casita de mu/necas...Lo encontre interesante, debido a que en la era en que se hizo era revolucionario y su constructora lo hizo en sus 50s.  En un ambiente machista...Sinceramente impresionante.  Y lo dejo simple, mas detalles en los links.

Churn out...

"Interestingly, she advanced in a male dominated field by co-opting the feminine tradition of miniatures."
November 27, 2011 7:40 AM

"The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death": an exploration of a collection of eighteen miniature crime scene models that were built in the 1940's and 50's by a progressive criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962). The models, which were based on actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, were created to train detectives to assess visual evidence. This seven-year project culminated in an exhibition and a book The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004). [Image Gallery]
posted by Fizz (28 comments total) 42 users marked this as a favorite


She was inspired by a classmate of her brother, George Burgess Magrath, who was just getting his MD from Harvard Medical School and was particularly interested in death investigation.[1][2] They remained close friends until his death in 1938. Magrath became a chief medical examiner in Boston and together they lobbied to have coroners replaced by medical professionals. Glessner Lee endowed the Harvard department of legal medicine (in 1931, the first such department in the country),[3] a chair in the field, the George Burgess Magrath Library,[1][4] and Harvard Associates in Police Science, a national organization for the furtherance of forensic science, one division of which is the Frances Glessner Lee Homicide School.[5] The Harvard program influenced other states to change over from the coroner system. Magrath became the department's first Chair.

Through the 1940s and 1950s, Lee hosted a series of semi-annual "Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death." 30 or 40 leading crime scene investigators would be invited to a week-long conference, where she would present them with an intricately constructed diorama of actual crime scenes, complete with working doors, windows, and lights. They would have 90 minutes to study the scene. The week culminated in a banquet at the Ritz Carlton.[1][4] The 18 dioramas are still used for training purposes by Harvard Associates in Police Science.[5]

For her work, Lee was made an honorary Captain in the New Hampshire State Police in 1943, the first woman in the US to hold that rank.[3][5]

Mas aqui:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1999-02-24/news/9902240040_1_forensic-science-police-science-1930s-and-1940s
http://harvardmagazine.com/2005/09/frances-glessner-lee-html
http://harvardmag.com/pdf/2005/09-pdfs/0905-36.pdf

Las fotos incluidas aqui son parte de una exhibicion fotografica de Corinne May Botz, que publico un libro al respecto.

http://www.corinnebotz.com/Corinne_May_Botz/Nutshell_Studies.html


"The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death" is an exploration of a collection of eighteen miniature crime scene models that were built in the 1940's and 50's by a progressive criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962). The models, which were based on actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, were created to train detectives to assess visual evidence. This seven-year project culminated in an exhibition and a book The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (The Monacelli Press, 2004).

The models display an astounding level of precision and detail: shades can be raised and lowered, mice live in the walls, stereoscopes work, whistles blow and pencils write. My photographs highlight the models’ painstaking detail, as well as the prominence of female victims. Through framing, scale, lighting, color, and depth of field, I attempt to bring intimacy and emotion to the scene of the crime. I want viewers to feel as if they inhabit the miniatures - to loose their sense of proportion and experience the large in the small.

In addition to creating over 100 photographs of the models, I spent years researching and writing about the female criminologist who conceived and built the models, Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962). I considered Lee my collaborator, and as a woman artist, it was important for me to unearth her story and make it known. My writing explores how Lee’s experience of domestic space informed her creations. Lee followed the role prescribed for her as an upper-class woman, but domestic life never suited her. The houses where she lived were a place of refuge, personal expression, and pride, but they were also a source of disempowerment and anxiety. While she was unhappy with the roles she was forced into as a woman, she maintained assumptions about a woman’s place in the home. Interestingly, she advanced in a male dominated field by co-opting the feminine tradition of miniatures

The models undermine the notion of the home as a safe haven and reveal it to be a far more complex sphere. All of the models depict lower middle class interiors, and the majority of victims are women who suffered violent deaths in the home.

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