Portraits de criminels australiens dans les années 1920

[zsas]

Yesterday someone here was asking about the look of photographs from the 1920s and it interested me, so in doing some Google searching I ran into the below site. Looks to be photographs of Australians from the 20's who were arrested for some offense or another and these are the mug shots. Quite a good photographer!

http://www.laboiteverte.fr/portraits-de-criminels-australiens-dans-les-annees-1920/


PE, el al: this ortho film? That why some of the eyes look white?

 

[brucemuir]

cool. thanks for posting

too bad the charges aren't listed also...

 

[CGW]

I'm a crazed collector of mugshots. Most of mine are 40s-50s N. American. What struck me about these were the poses--full length, seated, 3/4, many casually posed looking almost relaxed. Most of mine are hard left/right/full-face headshots--tense, drunk, beaten-up, defiant, crazed, scared.

None of mine ever have offences listed on the file card: just a file #, name, alias, race, sometimes DOB. Mugs were in a separate file away from rap sheets(record of arrest and prosecution) but still part of the sea of pre-electronic paper records.

Very interesting shots. Thanks!

 

[LJH]

Ralph Lauren purchased the rights for some of these in the last year or two for advertising.

See here.

 

[CGW]

Ralph Lauren purchased the rights for some of these in the last year or two for advertising.

See here.

Thanks for that. It doesn't appear to be uncommon elsewhere and isn't without problems:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/us/28mug.html?scp=1&sq=mug shots&st=cse

 

[Michael W]

There was a book published about these photos, titled "City of Shadows". No one knows who the photographers were, there were several of them; they were police photographers and that was the house style.

 

[Klainmeister]

So not to sound toooo stupid, but how does one take dual shots on a 4x5 or whatever sheet format that was?

 

[zsas]

^I was wondering the same!

 

[Michael W]

I'd assume some type of masking device over the lens.

 

[Molli]

... the first thing I did was look for relatives.

Wonderful photos; thanks for the link.

 

[zsas]

I'd assume some type of masking device over the lens.

That sounds reasonable. Has anyone ever seen some kind of rotating back negative holder that has masks? Could the photographers have done these vignettes on the same neg using a negative holder that had some kind of masking ability? As I think about it sounds pretty complex and I bet as you suggest, the photographer(s) were just taping cardboard with the masks cut out to get multiple non overlapping exposures per one negative

 

[Klainmeister]

Well, i suppose if you had a 4x5 holder that a darkslide could slide in both sides....that's a possibility.

 

[EASmithV]

Some of these old mug shots are better than some "Professional art portraitists" I've seen.

 

[LJH]

That sounds reasonable. Has anyone ever seen some kind of rotating back negative holder that has masks? Could the photographers have done these vignettes on the same neg using a negative holder that had some kind of masking ability? As I think about it sounds pretty complex and I bet as you suggest, the photographer(s) were just taping cardboard with the masks cut out to get multiple non overlapping exposures per one negative

Revolving back would have left one image upside down.

Rotating back would have left one image inverted (i.e. 'round the wrong way/back to front).

I'm going with masking.

 

[zsas]

^Good theory, sounds most plausible.