[John Dillinger's Feet, Chicago Morgue]
This press photo of John Dillinger, the celebrity gangster from Chicago shot down at age 31, morbidly embodies the twentieth-century's obsession with fame and hunger for physical contact with media personae. As the Depression era's most successful bank robber, Dillinger had become a folk hero for his brash, cocky manner and disregard for authority. This unflinching view of Dillinger laid out on a slab in the Chicago morgue not only bares the facts but ironically recalls Mantegna's The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ (ca. 1490).
Artwork Details
- Title: [John Dillinger's Feet, Chicago Morgue]
- Artist: Unknown (American)
- Date: 1934
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: 4 11/16 x 7 13/16 in. (11.9 x 19.8 cm)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, The Marks Family Foundation Gift, 2001
- Object Number: 2001.677
- Rights and Reproduction: © Bettmann / CORBIS
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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