Saturday, May 09, 2009

Looking away

This is not meant to be a trivial response to an awful story, one almost too awful to contemplate, but I have a small question about the mugshots shown in the paper of the 8 members of a Scottish paedophile ring who were found guilty on Thursday

Why are they, with one exception, shown looking to the left, no more than a quarter turn of the head?

These are not the police mugshots we are used to of a defiant or hangdog suspect taken full face or sometimes full profile. What is more, these all seem to be looking definitely at something or someone, not the photographer or the camera

Is it a Scottish thing?

Academic study of photographs can be very fruitful – as for example with numerous studies of the photos of the Raj

I can find only one similar title relating to mugshots – a fruitful area for both an art historical & social history approach, I would have thought




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