A Triptych

The posting The Ladies and the Cameramen led to A Sit-Down at Woolworth's, which as night follows day, or day follows night, leads to the third installment. Three is a powerful number.

After recounting my remembrances of NYC cops fighting crime with Polaroids, and my daughter's father-in-law telling me his story of his mentor fighting crime with instant photo booths at Woolworth's, I came across a book review I had saved, Least Wanted, a photo essay book on American mugshots.

The September 15, 2006 review, in the NYT by Randy Kennedy, describes the book that grew of a mugshot collection amassed by Mark Michaelson. It is a collection of mugshots, essays, newspaper clippings and out-quotes about crime: "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." Can't attach enough names to that one.

The photos are as stark as you'd expect a mug shot to be: black and white, grainy, taken of a subject who likely didn't plan that session as part of their day, but someone whose day can wind up that way. The book does not have household names in it. These are low-level offenders, going back to 1883. All types. People arrested for what are purported to be Communist activities (red literature) really are on a pink card.

Some subjects are bandaged, no doubt after something that has to do with why they are being photographed in the first place. Men, women, young, old, white, black, foreign, neat, or dishevelled, they are on display. There's a saying in horse racing that no one has to be asked to smile in the winner's circle. These people are not in the winner's circle.

The review is first rate, and the book is great too. The inside cover looks like something you checked out of the library in the 60s, with stamped dates from that wheeled date stamp that eventually expired. Dates go on, but that stamp can only go so far. (I wonder if the fortune made from that patent was an honest one.)

Randy Kennedy writes: "...collectively, as a kind of photo booth for the American underbelly..."

That cop was onto to something, wasn't he?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/arts/design/15mugs.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Least%20Wanted&st=cse

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Least+Wanted

http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com/