The Mug Shot Museum A Virtual Gallery Of Infamy And Intrigue - agents

A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph or booking photograph) is a photographic portrait of a person from the shoulders up, typically taken after a person is placed under arrest.

This fascinating collection illustrates the chronology of mug shots and how they have evolved over time.

The origins of the mug shot.

[1][2] the primary purpose of the mug shot is to allow law enforcement to have a photographic record of an arrested individual to allow for ident.

Display of mug shots at arresting images.

Arresting images features the two earliest mug shots to exist in a canadian public collection.

Alphonse bertillon, first head of the forensic identification service of the prefecture de police in paris (1893) via wikimedia commons.

In the 1880s, parisian police department clerk alphonse bertillon developed the mug shot, the name given to the standard format of police portrait photography that includes a frontal and profile image of the subject.

Bertillon’s mug shot consisted of two photographs—one facing the camera, the other in profile—attached to a written description of physical features and certain measurements, such as the size.

Us police departments began taking photographs of people they arrested in the 1850s.

In the 1880s, alphonse bertillon, an anthropologist and chief of the judicial identification service of france, invented the mug shot, a doubled photographic portrait focused tightly on the head, with one view facing the camera and the other in profile.

We’ll jump into the history, the technique, and the unexpected cultural impact of mug shots.

📸 Image Gallery

Although some of bertillon’s techniques and theories have fallen into disrepute, he’s credited with standardizing two major advances still in use today:

The evolution of record keeping and mug shots

The mug shot was a humdrum but reliable tool for keeping track of suspects and arrests.

These stark, unembellished photos serve a clear purpose in the justice system.

The mug shot and the crime scene photograph.

Stick with us to uncover how this form of photography has evolved beyond the precincts and into the public imagination.

James brown’s mugshot for disorderly conduct is a classic case of a photographer not understanding the angle of incidence and reflection, making the identification sign nearly illegible.