(11.13) “I’m ready for my close-up Sgt. DeMille.” This mugshot photo booth is one of the interactive activities at a new exhibit of black-and-white police mugshots currently up at Trade Pop-Up Gallery on Governor Street. Artist/collector Mark Michaelson can also arrange to have you fingerprinted. But for the extraordinary gallery of faces surrounding the visitor, this procedure was no lark. There are no explanatory texts with the images — few of the faces are even identified. You provide the backstory.
The show is called “Hookers, Stooges, Grifters and Goons. Punks, Sneaks, Mooks and Miscreants. Least Wanted: One Hundred Years of American Police Mugshots,” and it will only be up through November 13th.
A book about Michaelson’s collection, “Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots,” was launched a decade ago at an exhibit in New York City. (NYT 10.15.06)
There are gap-toothed teenagers and grandmothers, lawyers and longshoremen, career criminals and terrified first-timers. The pictures often read like a catalog of the human face and the things that can happen to it: crossed eyes and painted-on eyebrows, jug ears and broken noses, Clark Gable mustaches and porkpie hats.
From Andy Smith at the Providence Journal,
The photos are from the extensive collection of Rhode Islander Mark Michaelson, who estimated he owns about 10,000 mug shots, which roughly span the period from the 1870s to the 1960s.
“I find these fascinating on so many levels,” he said. “The faces, the expressions. They also tell us a lot about the history of crime, social and cultural history, our attitudes about race and sex.”
Michaelson’s twenty years of collecting had been sparked by the gift of a vintage Patty Hearst wanted poster, but he is comfortable parting with some of the vast archive. The images, many framed, are for sale, as are T-shirts and a screen-printed poster by Michaelson. And yes, Mark is the son of former state attorney general Julius Michaelson. This is Rhode Island.
Hours: Thursday, 1pm to 7pm/ Friday, 1pm to 9pm/ Saturday, 1pm to 7pm/ Sunday, Noon to 5pm.
Thursday through Sunday, November 3-6/November 10-13, Trade Pop-Up Gallery, 34 Governor Street
