FREAK SCENEOne Guy Has Lots and Lots of Weird Old Photos in His House
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Schoolchildren attending the funeral of a classmate in New York City, 1911. Photo courtesy of the Burns Archive.
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 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
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote:
This is incredible. And it’s true that people pay a whooole lot more attention when a photograph is involved. | | Anonymous, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote:
its funny because you dont really realize how weird the art that your parents collect is until you have a friend come over and they are like "what the fuck is this!!?"... | |
| poozer, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote:
isn’t that like a good-parent requirement? to have some art that creeps you the fuck out? mine had this charcoal thing their friend did of faces coming out from a shadow. i had no telling how many nightmares about it, but now i love it. in fact, i convinced them to give it to me and it’s hanging over my mantle right now. | | Anonymous, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote:
oh my- burnsarchive.com/archive/medilink.html | | Anonymous, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote:
my parents house has a lot of weird art too. possibly weirder than this stuff. I’m talking about a brass Buddha statue, next to a Chinese print, next to a paining of a little boy carrying a chicken. They seem to think it works though | | Anonymous, on Mar 5, 2009 wrote:
an old neighbor of mine had a massive collection of vintage porn that was from around this time. sepia toned. it was pretty graphic and there was a shit ton of pubic hair! he showed some to me and asked if i was interested in selling it on ebay. said i could have half the money. i told him i’d look into it and pretended i forgot. not sure about the laws on vintage porn since some people call it art but i sure as shit don’t want my friends looking at my history and seeing a bunch of old-timey ass fucking. | | Anonymous, on Mar 5, 2009 wrote:
Women should always wear white to funerals. It looks cooler and there’s a level of class that a black veil can’t touch. | | Anonymous, on Mar 5, 2009 wrote:
whenever i see photos of kids from this era i think they must all be slinging newspapers all "extra extra read all about it" and shit. | | Anonymous, on Mar 5, 2009 wrote:
yes! stereoscopic is exactly what i was looking for. those things are nuts for being so old. some of the slides my mom had were very bizarre too. | |
| joe bananas, on Mar 4, 2009 wrote:
Old black and whites are amazing, they give a really creepy feel but capture the moment perfectly. If your out getting blazing in town just slip your camera on to black and white or if classy "sepia" suddenly you and your friends are whisked away to a 1930’s speakeasy rather than a vomit smelling dive bar. | | Anonymous, on Mar 4, 2009 wrote:
I like black and white photographs because it makes it appear that people only wore black and white clothes and a world where that happened is one I like to believe actually existed. | | Anonymous, on Mar 4, 2009 wrote:
no relation to ken burns, i take it? | |
| doomslang, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
I’m not sure but the old 3-d photos you are talking about are probably "stereoscopic" images. I know they have ones where there are two almost exact images next to each other and you stare at them like those magic-eye puzzle jams and they get pretty 3-d. | |
| | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
oh my goodness, i thought the burnsarchive.com link would, if anything, be less of a downer than the child funeral, but boy was i wrong. | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
I’m glad someone mentioned Shorpy. It has great archives of old photos similar to this, organized into galleries for easy browsing:
www.shorpy.com | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
you can tell yourself it’s all the same but it’s pretty obvious there’s a difference in surgery photos and pictures of dead children.. not that i wouldn’t want to see the dead kids moreb but don’t kid yourself buddy. | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
what are those old photos where you put them in the viewing contraption and move it to focus and it looks 3d? my mom had one of those i played with. pretty fucking sweet technology for back in the day. | |
| sam i am, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
wait. he has a 90-room house? where is this mansion? upstate? | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
you don’t like child murders? uhh... who does? the murderers, maybe. that’s it. | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
why’s he gotta tease us with the tar and feather photo? i’ve always wondered how bad those really were. if it was the post t & f’ing tar removal i’m not sure i could handle it. doesn’t it rip your skin off? | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
I wish there were more samples from his archive | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
wow, somebody should tell this guy about the internet | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-hst | |
| zerotransfat, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
I’ve come to love odd and creepy photos. They leave an impression and capture the moment in time in all it’s raw, weirdness. historic photographs really do the trick in that particular aspect. if you take a look at old medical photography, how could you not be intrigued and at the same time be completely grossed out looking at a man with elephantitus, sitting on his own sack? | | Anonymous, on Mar 3, 2009 wrote:
i wonder how much he would pay for the tar and feather pic? in this recession one must be prepared to get creative to get paid | | Anonymous, on Feb 26, 2009 wrote:
that’s what i love about vice. one minute i’m reading about eating out a bloody vag, the next about our troops in the middle east. i have my bar fodder and shit i can chat with my coworkers about rolled into one nice package. | |
| dingo dick, on Feb 26, 2009 wrote:
less kern? what are you, a girl? | | Anonymous, on Feb 26, 2009 wrote:
i dunno, I kind of like the balance in content that vice provides. if there was too much of this and no kern (for example) then it wouldn’t be what it is...a compilation of interesting shit with a cool coverpage. some things might get old and played out but you can’t please everybody. | | Anonymous, on Feb 25, 2009 wrote:
it’s like shorpy but really depressing | | | Next 30 comments > |
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