Wanly illuminated in the sickeningly greenish aura of an outdoor motel lamp, a woman’s partially clothed body lies lifeless at the threshold of Room # 118. Inside, a reverse peeping Tom anxiously peers out the window, hunching before another woman’s body, his piercing leer cryptically directed away from both corpses. This isn’t a still from a Hitchcock movie; it’s one of many photographs in Melanie Pullen‘s “Unseen Stories” at Leica Gallery LA. True to the promise of the show’s title, each image is replete with ambiguous suggestions cuing the viewer to conjure potential narratives. Occupying the entire upstairs gallery and spilling over to ground floor, the exhibition features a selection of rarely shown images from Pullen’s diverse collections of fashion photography, including her “Voyeur,” “Molotov,” “Juliette,” and “High Fashion Crime Scenes” series, among many others. Besides murders, suicides and Molotov cocktails, there are glamorous witches, Russian roulette and costume parties turned violent inside bathrooms. The common denominator is an uneasy relationship between beauty and trauma. Throughout her work, Pullen investigates society’s glamorization of brutality and suffering. Her photos expose the fact that, too often in our society, violent acts are seen as secondary to how the victim and/or perpetrator looked. If you like Pullen’s photography, this show is not to be missed; if you’re unfamiliar with her work, it’s a great introduction. Viewer beware: just in time for Halloween, much of Pullen’s grisly imagery is as disturbing as any gory horror movie, searing your brain with mental pictures likely to induce nightmares long after you’ve departed her show.

Leica Gallery LA
8783 Beverly Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90048
Show runs through Oct. 31