Victorian Visual Culture

The year is 2019. You’re sitting around idly at your customer service job, waiting for an incoming call to temporarily relieve you of your boredom. You’ve convinced yourself by the fifth hour that this is the longest, most mind numbing shift you’ve ever worked. After what feels like an eternity, the landline finally rings. You glance at the caller ID and raise an eyebrow when you see the name of your gossip-hungry manager. You answer the phone and are immediately met with an onslaught of nonsensical accusations against an old coworker, who will be referred to here as “E.” You weren’t particularly close, but you remember E fondly; he was a diligent worker, had the endearing habit of bragging about his young daughter with a lopsided grin, and even bought you coffee a number of times. The notion that an upstanding guy like him would ever commit such atrocities seemed blatantly implausible. You’re about to dismiss your manager’s outrageous claims until she piques your curiosity with a simple directive: look up his name.

You comply, skeptical as you type his full name into the Google search bar. Numerous results from popular people search websites flood in, but one particular result catches your eye: mugshots.com. You hesitate for a brief moment, a wave of dread washing over you. You click the link, enter E’s full name for a second time, and are unable to avert your gaze from the lifeless eyes that bore into you. You note his sloppy crew cut, patchy stubble, and gaunt features. The date above the photograph implies that it was taken over a decade ago, but E looks considerably older here than he does in your memory. The frontal-profile portrait on your screen is such a departure from what you know, what you’ve accepted as fact, that you can hardly believe its legitimacy. You scroll past the general information attached to E’s profile—his race, gender, hair and eye color, height, weight, birth date, and stated residence—and with a sharp intake of breath, read his charges and incarceration history:

Offense date: –/–/2007.

Offense 1: TORTURES ANIMAL W/ INTENT INFLI.

Offense 2: FALS.IMPRSN-NO 787.01.

Prison Sentence Length: 1Y 6M 0D. 

You are appalled. How did you ever hold this insidious man in such high regard? Why, also, did it feel so wrong to so effortlessly unveil this ugly truth about his past? You harbor no sympathy for E, but wonder how he must feel to be constantly plagued by the knowledge that his reputation is irreversibly stained. While he could pay a premium to have his image taken down and his digital footprint audited (yes, even mugshots have become a commodity), the reality is that online information can never be fully erased. In spite of his supposed reformation, E’s name and face are permanently stigmatized with the mark of criminality… and it only took a modicum of digging to unearth that truth. Ultimately, you find yourself faced with an ethical conundrum: is it constitutional (or otherwise acceptable) to have one’s shame not only immortalized, but made publicly accessible through the institution of the photographic archive?

This has been my guiding question for our discussions about the emergence of institutional photography as a means to identify and document convicts. In the prison photograph, the subject’s body is stripped of its autonomy and becomes property of the state apparatus, establishing “another mode by which the state laid claim to the self and to the representation and disciplining of potentially unruly or ‘terrorist’ bodies” (Tagg 64). In Foucauldian terms, photography thus promoted “‘a surveillance that [made] it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish’” transgressive bodies (qtd. in Lashmar 64). Significantly, the gradual accumulation of these mugshots culminates in a visual archive that articulates a distinct criminal “type.” Tagg elaborates on this idea in The Burden of Representation, claiming that it is through this practice of “filing” that the criminal body is “illuminated, focused, measured, numbered and named… [and] forced to yield to the minutest scrutiny of gestures and features” (Tagg 64). The mugshot, then, is the site where crime, spectacle, and punishment intersect.

These sentiments are echoed in the aforementioned experience with E. Intentionally or not, his mugshot was read for traditional signs of criminality (ex. physical unkemptness), and once this evidence was confirmed, E’s individuality was decentered and replaced by his criminal status. In other words, the viewer’s judgment of E’s character was completely compromised by the implications of a single evocative photograph. This blight on E’s public record is like a digital ball and chain, linking him both to his own shameful past and to other felons across the country. This cruel reality seems to reflect the natural progression and evolution of criminal photography from the 19th century to today.

Should this phenomenon be considered an extension of the criminal’s punishment, or should their privacy be respected? Should mugshots be deemed closed records, or should people have the right to access others’ shame? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Works Cited

Lashmar, Paul. “How to Humiliate and Shame: A Reporter’s Guide to the Power of the Mugshot.” Social Semiotics, vol. 24, no. 1, Feb. 2014, pp. 56–87. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2013.827358.

Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photography and History (Amherst, 1988). pp. 60-66.