by Tim Barlass

"You never became immune to it" … John Snowden with some of his old cameras. Courtesy of Ben Rushton

John Snowden's photo albums are not your typical collection of happy snaps of family and friends.

Throughout his more than 30 years as a police forensic officer and photographer, he collected many disturbing images.

When he was 17 years old, Mr Snowden's father, a police officer, brought home a Kodak No.1A folding pocket camera — the type with the concertina-like bellows. Not long after, local detectives needed some photographs of the body of a boy who had been shot.

That was the beginning of Mr Snowden's lifelong affair with photography. The then teenager set up a "studio" in the gloomy morgue at Lismore hospital after he wired an old torch with a flash bulb to get the shots. Thereafter, most days of his career resembled the sort of events that make for a good script for a series of CSI.

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Source: The Sydney Morning Herald