I’ve always had a bit of a fascination with old portrait photographs. Whether I find them in a library archive, museum, or at a thrift store, I like to wonder what the lives of these people were like. I imagine their careers, their hobbies, their temperament, or even what they might have eaten for breakfast that morning. One specific category of portraits that I find particularly intriguing is old mugshots. These are some of the only photos that come in pairs, one showing the subject face-forward, and one in profile. The original purpose of this was to provide the police or witnesses with a better understanding how this person would look from different angles. However, extraneous information, such as clothing, posture, and setting are intentionally placed out of frame. Without those clues, these pictures become more of a blank slate for my imagination.

I was recently looking through a set of mugshots from the early 1920’s and found myself thinking mostly of character types found in old dime store crime novels. While the main hero and villain are often portrayed with a lot of detail and depth, secondary characters tend to be quite one dimensional. Petty thieves, con men, and getaway drivers simply serve to further the plot of the protagonist and are often just a short-lived caricature of their profession. Though not ontologically related, that made me think of the more common modern usage of the word profile. At its most basic level, this is the act of reducing a complex human being down to basic stereotypes. Profiling is certainly a heated and complicated topic to approach for any artist and I felt that it wasn’t something that I wanted to tackle in this piece. Rather, I decided to go in the opposite direction by writing a set of character pieces based upon four types of criminals often found old crime novels. Sometimes poignant, sometimes comical, each one was written with that character’s perspective in mind.