Freak Scene

Schoolchildren attending the funeral of a classmate in New York City, 1911. Photo courtesy of the Burns Archive.

You will almost certainly have seen images from the Burns Archive, most likely in books such as

Death Scenes

. But the archive of Dr. Stanley Burns covers far more than forensics and violence. The New York-based ophthalmologist has dedicated his life to collecting photos from forgotten and undervalued genres. Now, after more than 30 years, he is sitting on a million of them and producing six books a year featuring some of the most astonishing medically and historically significant images you can imagine.

Vice: How did you end up with the world’s largest collection of vintage medical photography?

Dr. Stanley Burns:

I started the collection in the mid-1970s when I realised that the photograph offered a historic document that, in many cases, was more accurate than written descriptions. That’s what I found with the first medical photograph I bought, which was a South American Indian with a tumour of the jaw. It was a parotid gland tumour and it was written up in all the books as a carotid artery tumour. So from that picture I knew the written sources were mistaken. The photograph is the best evidence.

What caused the shift from medical photography into criminal photography?

It’s no shift at all. It’s forensics. When I originally collected photographs my idea was to collect images of all of the jobs that physicians do. One of the things that physicians did in those days was declaring a body dead after execution, and that’s how I got into the crime, and the forensics. Then I delved into the psychology of the killers and how crazy these people are.

Do you ever find peculiar the fascination people have with images of death and crime?

Well, you get terror fascination. A lot of the times these images are your nightmares. You don’t want to get hit by a car, you don’t want to be murdered, or get bubonic plague. So what the photo does is it allows you to look at these fears without really dealing with them. Also, when you are looking at these photos you look at them through the “safety net of time”.

You are an eye surgeon, but I take it this has become your major work?

I work six and a half days a week, about 12 hours a day on this. I couldn’t put out six books a year without that much time dedicated to it. I am totally involved in it, and have been for over 30 years.

Do these photos invade your home?

Oh yes. I have 1,045 of these photographs hanging up in my home. Well, it’s not so much my home, it’s more like a museum, it’s been taken over. I have 90 rooms full of photographs. We have over a million photographs. The most valuable ones are in three different, large bank vaults—they are the early daguerreotypes, really rare images.

Are you desensitised to these images or are there some you still find hard to look at?

Well, I don’t like the child murders. I find almost any of them hard to look at. I just can’t understand crimes against children. Animals are totally helpless, and one of the ways you can see human personality is how they deal with animals, because people who beat and kill animals, they are the ones you need to look out for.

How have you built the collection?

I realised I was at a time and place where I could acquire this mass of photos. They were available and relatively inexpensive. I mean, I was amassing masterpieces. One writer described it as similar to a major collector in 1900 deciding they wanted to buy Impressionist paintings. Well, the answer is that you could! I spent all the money I ever had. And I acquired a million photos that are not in museums: no art photographs, no music, no sports—you can find those everywhere else. My practice supported my hobby until my hobby became my practice.

How do you keep track of all these images?

I have cross-referencing index brilliance as well as encyclopaedic knowledge of times, history, places and events. So that, combined with my medical knowledge, means that when I look at a photo, I see it differently from how anyone else would. I can look at a photo and know what it is.

What is the key to your collection?

I want the images that people have heard about, but never seen. I have pictures of people being tarred and feathered—you have heard about it, but have you ever seen it?

No.

No, you haven’t, and that is what I want in my photos. I know what exists elsewhere, and I therefore know how unusual my photos are.

BRUNO BAYLEY

For more, visit burnsarchive.com