Why am I passionate about this?
My name is Cecilia Ruiz and I am a Mexican author and illustrator living in Brooklyn. Apart from desperately trying to make more books, I teach design and illustration at Queens College and the School of Visual Arts. I’m fascinated by visual storytelling and its evocative power. One of my idols, the French filmmaker Robert Bresson, says that art lies in suggestion. Bresson believed that things should be shown from one single angle that evokes all the other angles without showing them. All the books in this list do that—they show us death but they make us think about the mysterious and poetic ways in which life operates.
Cecilia's book list on pictures about death
Why did Cecilia love this book?
The photographs compiled in this book were all captured by Enrique Metinides, my favorite Mexican photographer.
Enrique worked as a crime photographer for over 50 years, capturing murders, crashes, and all kinds of catastrophes for Mexico’s infamous tabloids. This photo book is a great testament of Mexico’s palpable surrealism, where death is just one more component of the chaotic landscape.
Even though Metinides worked for the sensationalist press, none of the images in this book could be called that. His photos emanate an enormous respect for the victims and for tragedy itself.
The beauty of his shots do not romanticize the “real-life horror” that we are looking at. Rather, they remind us that sometimes, when in the presence of the devastating forces of life, there’s nothing else to do but be a humble spectator.
1 author picked 101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
- Coming soon!