Melanie Pullen’s long-awaited first monograph, High Fashion Crime Scenes, presents her breathtakingly beautiful works based on vintage crime scene images, first-hand accounts, and documents Pullen mined from the files of the lapd. In 2002, drawn to the rich details and compelling stories preserved in the criminal records, Melanie Pullen began restaging the events, outfitting the “victims” (her selected models) in current haute couture, and photographing them in her staged settings. To create this work, Pullen at times enlisted the help of up to sixty people per shoot: set builders, makeup artists, models, stylists and stunt crews, among others. Her models have included the actresses Rachel Miner and Juliet Lewis. The collection of more than one hundred images has received considerable critical acclaim in the national and international press. Over the past three years, the twenty-nine year old artist has occasionally worked as a commercial fashion photographer. She has shot layouts for the likes of Flaunt and Rolling Stone. High Fashion Crime Scenes is presented in an oversized format, richly printed and machine varnished on matt art paper. Texts by Luke Crisell, Robert Enright and Colin Westerbeck.
