‘Seen as a portrait collects ion, one can’t help but wonder how mugshots differ from other forms of portraiture. The officers taking the pictures for the various police departments - whether or not any particular artistry is involved - are photographers in their own right, and the rooms to which the arrested are brought before a camera can be thought of as portrait studios. The difference between a mugshot and a picture taken by a friend, a family member or a professional photographer has everything to do with circumstances. Some of the people here appear perfectly calm and composed, even well-dressed, as if in fact they had been photographed at a family gathering or social event. Others look particularly distressed. Very few are smiling; those that are appear oblivious, even giddy, despite their misfortune. More often than not, the people pictured appear perfectly “normal,” especially considering that they are accused of everything from shoplifting to murder, from theft and arson to statutory rape, and they manage to retain their individuality. The written comments that accompany the mugshots offer all sorts of fascinating clues, at t.mes s suggesting particular narratives, while at others leaving us to imagine the story behind the face. Both are tantalizing propositions.’
As early as the 1840s, law enforcement departments throughout the world have taken photographs of freshly booked individuals and paired them with basic information cards as a means of trackings arrests. The system based on a “mug” or facial photograph was standardized in 1888 by Alphonse Bertillon, who was later partially responsible for the false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus in the infamous Dreyfus affair.
The circulation of mugshots throughout popular culture is evidence of an American public obsessed with what sociologist Michelle Brown calls “penal spectatorship” (David Scott, ed., Why Prison (Cambridge, 2013), p. 108). Widely disseminated and free from copyright, from the very beginning mugshots were an essential element of a successfully crafted tabloid news story.
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For Andy Warhol, mugshots provided the perfect source material: the poses were repetitive and the sizes consistent, much like his famous Campbell’s Soup cans. Warhol also appreciated the short-lived fame afforded to criminals covered in tabloids and the use of a photograph originally created for one use to be reappropriated for another. For his scandalous commission for the New York Pavilion of the 1964 World’s Fair, Warhol enlarged New York City Police Department’s 13 Most Wanted Criminals, displaying them in epic proportions on the side of the pavilion. While the installation lasted only a few days before officials painted it over, Warhol would create a series of smaller screen painted works on canvas that same year.