by Diane Keaton
First published 2021
Actress Diane Keaton owns the photographic archive of county coroner Robert H. Boltz, who documented automobile accidents from the 1960s through the 1980s. Most of these crashes happened at night. Keaton's interest began when a car hit a telephone pole outside her grandmother's house, killing both people inside. She works with Los Angeles photographer Nick Reid to select 32 duotone images from Boltz's collection. The photographs show wrecked cars without any trace of the victims. Boltz captured the skeletal remains of automobiles with the visual quality of 1930s black and white crime films. The empty crash scenes remind Keaton of the couple who died outside her grandmother's home years ago. The absence of human presence in these images creates the book's emotional center.
Genres: art, death, 20th-century, crime, 21st-century, photography
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: absence-of-human-presence, emotional-center, skeletal-remains
Setting: Los Angeles
Period: 1960s, 1980s
72 pages · Hardcover · Twin Palms Publishers