The Mugshot (web)

Roland Fischer

In the series of 'Los Angeles Portraits' (1989 - 1993) Fischer's headshots depicts men's and women's faces of various ages. They are serene and the sitters facial expressions are quite odd and maybe even ambiguous but present and distinctive.
Certain details reminds me of mugshot type photographs as Fischer uses this idea of standardazation. All women he photographed are beautiful, they all are photographed in swiming pool with the same blue background and he only takes a picture of the head and shoulders. Te title of the series, blue background and the fact that all the women he photographs are beutiful gives his images a Hollywood type feel where everything is about the beauty and wealth.
Fischer is firstly interested in the “contrast between the surface with an almost mathematical character of the photograph and the natural shape of the human face.

'Los Angeles Portraits' (1989-1993) by Roland Fischer.

Source:

(http://www.mudam.lu/en/le-musee/la-collection/details/artist/roland-fischer/)






Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin
Glyn Jones is an engineer for Photo - Me International who services machines in Cornwall area. When I came accross this image I started finding out more about the photo booths that we all have used to take this mugshot type self-portrait. Photo booths across Britain are serviced weekly to maintain Home Office standards as they regulate the format and style of passport photographs. The engineers are required to make test portraits of themselves and send them for approval to head office.

Glyn Jones, Photo-Me Engineer, Cornwall, UK. © Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

(images: scanned from Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Fig.)

Sources:

Broomberg, A.; Chanarin, O. (2007). Fig. Brighton: Photoworks.

http://www.photoworks.org.uk/programme/publications/fig




Taryn Simon 'The Innocents'

American photographer Taryn Simon's self-portrait that plays with our brain confusing our ability to identify and proves that distortion is constant in our eyes. Changes in photograph are easily detected by the brain when the head is the right side up. Identical changes are difficult for the brain to process when the head is upside down.

Self-portrait (rotate 180° to view)

(image from: http://www.blindspot.com/artists/index.php?id=simon_taryn)

Simon's self-portrait links in with the series called 'The Innocents' where she photographed men and women from accross the United States who had been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. With these series she investigates photography's ability to blur truth and fiction and it's influence on memory which sometimes can lead to lethal consequences. For the men in these photographs the primary cause of their wrongful convictions was mistaken identification.

'The Innocents' touches the theme of photography offering the criminal justice system a tool that transforms citizens into criminals and the criminal justice system fails to recognize the limitations of relying on photographic identification.
Taryn Simon photographed all the wrongfuly convicted at places that came to particular significance in history of their convictions - the scene of arrest, the scene of misidentification, the alibi location and even scene of the crime.


Faces are funny things. And it's interesting how we are able to recognise, identify people by certain features such as the shape of the eyes and size of the nose. But it's very easy to make a mistake and misidentify when you're trying to identify somebody by memory and even photograph.



Sources:

http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2005/08/taryn_simon_the.php

http://blog.ted.com/2009/09/24/photographing_s/

http://tarynsimon.com/video_innocents.php