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MOCA Jacksonville's 'High Fashion Crime Scenes' juxtaposes the beautiful with the grotesque

Melanie Pullen photographs are real 'High Fashion Crime Scenes'

Charlie Patton
Because Pullen's works are hung floor to ceiling in the Atrium Gallery, working layouts on paper showed where each piece should be placed to fit.

When people first meet her, they are often taken aback, says photographer Melanie Pullen.

They expect some gloomy, Gothic character, not a sunny, pretty, California blonde.

Based on Pullen's work, which is on display in the Museum of Contemporary Art's Atrium Gallery beginning today, the mistaken impression isn't surprising.

The images in her series "High Fashion Crime Scenes" are quite beautiful, but they are also quite disturbing.

Take "Dorothy," a picture of a wooden barrel on a lush expanse of grass. Protruding out of the barrel are a pair of shapely legs at the end of which are two bright-red shoes.

In her photo "Nina," bright-red shoes are at the center of the picture. They are attached to the feet of well-dressed young woman who has apparently hanged herself or been hanged over a trash-strewn alley. The girl's head and neck are outside the frame of the photo.

Pullen, 35, traces her fascination with red shoes to the 1948 movie "The Red Shoes," the story of a ballet dancer that ends tragically when she falls in front of a train.

Pullen will give a talk about her show at 2 p.m. today at MOCA Jacksonville. She said her fascination with crime scenes goes back to the mid-1990s. She was thumbing through photo books at an L.A. bookstore and ran across Luc Sante's "Evidence," a collection of crime-scene photos taken in New York between 1914 and 1918.

As she thought about the brutality of the crimes depicted and the contrast with the technical beauty of the photography, she also began to think about how contemporary media have sensationalized and glamorized crime coverage in a way "detached from the personal nature of tragedy."

When she accidentally picked up another crime scene book, she said she found herself noticing the hairstyles and the shoes, rather than the victims themselves. "I was shocked at myself," she said.

Thus was born the idea for "High Fashion Crime Scenes," a series of photos inspired by images she found in the archives of the Los Angeles police and coroner's departments.

She said she "shied away from really famous crime scenes," so there are no images recreating the 1943 Black Dahlia murder case or the 1947 gangland assassination of Bugsy Siegel.

In recreating the scenes, she preferred to dress her models in contemporary fashions by designers such as Prada, Gucci and Chanel.

Pullen's photographs tend to be elaborate productions, as though she were making a movie, with crews of up to 60 people helping her capture her images, which she shoots on film.

Since it was first exhibited in 2003 in Los Angeles, "High Fashion Crime Scenes" has been attracting national and international attention. Pullen has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, GQ, Fortune, Vogue Italia, W and the London Independent, among other publications.

The photographs in "High Fashion Crime Scenes" are generally monumental in size, 5 and 6 feet tall, which suited the purposes of Marcelle Polednik, who became director of MOCA Jacksonville in February.

Polednik was looking for art that would fit the dimensions of MOCA's Atrium Gallery, the first-floor space that is almost 40 feet high,

Pullen's photographs will be hung salon-style, floor to ceiling - the first of what will be a series of such exhibits in the gallery, Polednik said.

Polenik attended college in Los Angeles and was previously chief curator of the Monterey Museum of Art in Monterey, Calif. She knew Pullen's work and knew it would fit her dual goal of showcasing the Atrium Gallery's dimensions and featuring emerging and mid-career artists.

Polednik said she isn't sure how visitors will react to Pullen's "very provocative images" but that she expects those who take time with the photos to be rewarded by the richness of their cinematic imagery. Hanging them in the Atrium Gallery, which can be viewed not just from the ground floor but from the second- and third-floor exhibit spaces, will provide "multiple vantage points" to explore their complexities, she said.

The exhibit will continue at MOCA Jacksonville, 333 N. Laura St., through Sunday, Nov. 6.

charlie.patton@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4413