To most people, gun crime is what you see on television and read about in the press. And perhaps  these images by Paul Smith are so fascinating, because it is so alien and yet  so serious, with life changing results, and because details of  a murder by a firearm are a mystery to all of us.

The “Impact” (as Paul has called this series) of such tiny objects traveling at such high velocity causes catastrophic damage.

The reveal therefore, is all the more shocking, that these beautiful, floral (and in some case jewell like) images are in fact photographs of bullets that have been gathered by police forensic teams in a variety of ways, including being extracted during autopsies of murder victims.

Paul photographed them at a very high resolution so that they become large than life.. .38 becomes 2 feet…. so that their detail, construction, damage and power becomes ever so apparent.

For such devastating objects to be turned into such beautiful subjects, is a real testament to Paul’s skill. Each one being so different from the other, yet all produced to do the same job.

If you think they look good here, you should see them as five foot square prints….

I love that he decided to produce this series. The imagination to do it is so typical of his talent.

He is a great photographer.

Yet again John Offenbach has turned in an exceptional series. This time his hand has created images of such delicacy and definition its almost painful. Simple subject, but beautifully interpreted. No one else could do this. How great would it be to produce an advertising campaign that uses photography of this quality? Imagine a poster site featuring anyone of these powerful, elegant images… Or any media for that matter, showing, if not these, then photography using and reflecting images like these, with their undeniable high level of simple excellence. This is bare bones photography, not the fashionable heavily re-touched, clunky, colour images now so popular because of the iPhone. I can guarantee that ‘the man in the street” would stop and be impressed. People are a lot more visually literate than most imagine.