Many years ago, more than thirty, I worked for the Rochester Police Department as a graphic artist. I had access to the mug shots, which at the time were kept in filing cabinets, and I used them in flyers that I produced on a small AB Dick press. The mugshots were real photos pasted on the files. David Bowie’s had already been ripped off his rap sheet. I was hired under a grant and my job duties were slim. I would read the New Yorker at work and visit Brad Fox who was a watchman at the County office building next door. For me there is nothing worse than a job without tasks and deadlines but the mugshots were cool. I had already taken some of mine own back in Indiana outside the trailer we lived in. And I took another batch at the Bug Jar in ’98. I used a Kodak one megapixel camera, reduced the photos to bit-mapped halftone pixels and tiled the print-outs on our HP Laser Jet. At a holiday party on Saturday Martin Edic told me the shot of him from this show is his favorite photo of himself.
I feel as though people wish I would paint something else They have told me as much but I really am not obsessed with mugshots. I don’t even look at the crime the people are charged with. I just like the raw range of expression, from defiant to vulnerable, and it’s fun using them as sources.
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Ironically, I am one of those who thinks you should change subjects. Though it really doesn’t matter.