His career as a crime photographer continued until 1997 when he retired, but since then his work has gained appreciation on its own merits, being exhibited in galleries and other venues in Mexico, the United States, and Europe.

Soon after, he began taking pictures of car accidents on the streets of the San Cosme neighborhood of Mexico City where he lived.

[4] He expanded this to opportunities found hanging around the police station, going to the morgue and becoming a Red Cross volunteer to ride with ambulances.

[5][6] His work was principally published in the "nota roja" (literally "red news" because of bloody images), sections and event whole journals characterized by crude text and sensationalist photography dealing with violence and death.

[5] However he had a collection of more than 4,000 miniature ambulances, fire trucks, and figures of firemen and medics, which he has photographed in arrangements depicting emergency scenes.

[6][4] The genre focuses on the grisly and visceral, and his aggressive style makes his work comparable to that of New York crime photographer Weegee.

[5] What made Metinides' work distinct and popular was not so much the themes but rather the inclusion of the faces of aggressors, corpses, other victims, emergency workers, and onlookers for emotional impact.

[5] Sean O'Hagan of the Guardian states of his work, ,"Amid the car wrecks, the burning buildings, the electrocutions, the buses hanging precariously over flyovers or submerged in rivers, this image has always stuck in my mind as emblematic of how brilliant, and ruthless, a photographer Metinides is.