At the beginning of the 20th century, Luigi Tomellini worked as a forensic photographer in Genoa. His photographic plates were an essential tool for local police investigations at the time, but somehow they were lost after his death – and only recovered in the 1980s. The pictures are absolutely beautiful, macabre as well as a valuable record of old forensic photography techniques.
"There's a long and troubled story behind these plates," says Stefano Amoretti, a Cultural and Creative Industries student at the City University London. "Riccardo Sezzi found them in an abandoned suitcase in Genoa back in the 1980s. It was an entire portfolio containing images of people killed 70 years before but he didn't know what to do with them, so he just kept them in his home until 2013. That year, we developed the plates together for the first time, in a darkroom we set up in his bathroom."
