Hookers, stooges, grifters and goons. Punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants. These are portrait images of the least wanted. Men and women. Elderly and adolescent. Rich and poor. Mostly poor.
These photographs are part of a collection of over 10,000 American criminal mugshots ranging from the 1880s through to the 1970s, gathered together over the last ten years. They form a poetic encyclopedia of discarded portraits, set free from the steel file drawers of police departments and prisons.
Created as utilitarian instruments, they survive as extraordinary visual artifacts. Bored, sheepish, proud, coy, tough, defiant, bounced and bruised. Innocent-until-proven-guilty faces that stare back at the camera with unmistakable individuality. This is central casting for the late-late show of an unvarnished reality. Small-timers fallen through the cracks.
Some pictures in the collection are accompanied by municipal ephemera, attached to cards and documents. Documented and classified. One of the shots, a double-view photo of a man from Minneapolis, 1930s, was attached to a card which was housed in a manilla sleeve, typewritten, rubber-stamped and stapled. "Had two pairs of trousers in his possession which he could not account for." Others consist of only a portrait. Front. Side. No name, no date, no place. They tell their stories with their faces, clothes and haircuts.
This is not a comprehensive history of mugshots. Simply a gathering of faces, of subjects who tell their tale. Ready-made and pop.
