2023-08-25 10:29:41
The prison footage has long since become part of American pop culture. The history of the country can sometimes be retold on the basis of the pictures.
Donald Trump envisions it this way: His mugshot becomes a bestseller and part of American pop culture. The former president, who has had to answer several times in court, wants to integrate the image from prison into his presidential campaign. He himself posted the recording pregnant with meaning on X, formerly Twitter – his first post after a long Twitter ban. Trump’s mugshot can already be purchased on T-shirts, under the picture is the words: “Never surrender!”
Trump wants to exploit the mugshot for his own cause. The actress Jane Fonda, whose mugshot from 1970 has already gone around the world and who has recently been arrested at least twice in climate protests, also does this under different circumstances. Today she ponders on television how best to behave in the event of an arrest. But it’s Fonda’s old mugshot, with her left hand held up, that has become part of American pop culture. It hangs in studios and homes and is commonly seen as an iconography of their rebellion against the Vietnam War. Fonda was arrested in Cleveland at the time on charges of smuggling drugs. But her activism is known to have angered the Nixon administration, with the CIA and FBI hot on her heels.
The professionalization of mugshots for the prison system can be traced back to the criminalist Alphonse Bertillon (born 1853) in Paris. Photography in this format spread quickly, with mugshots of Stalin and Lenin documented in pre-revolutionary Russia and Benito Mussolini in pre-fascist Italy. In the USA, the crime story can sometimes be retold using mugshots.
Mugshot of cult leader Charles Manson, 1968. Wikipedia
There is hardly any other recording of Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin of John F. Kennedy, apart from his mugshot. Al Capone, Chicago’s most famous criminal, actually smiles at the photographer in one of his mugshots. On the other hand, that of cult leader Charles Manson, who does not look directly into the camera with wide eyes, is really scary. The mugshots of serial killers stand as a reminder of the abundance of sometimes unbelievable crimes committed in the USA (Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, to name just three).
Al Capone, Chicago’s most famous gangster. There are several mugshots of him. FBI
In the US, however, mugshots tell a different story. Civil rights activists were regularly harassed, arrested and detained. In Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. Your mugshot from 1955 still tells the long road to equality for the Afro-American population: Park’s action resulted in the bus boycott of many Afro-Americans. Martin Luther King was also arrested and photographed during the bus boycott.
The mugshots of the Freedom Riders have also gone down in history: they were volunteers who occupied segregated seats and waiting rooms in the southern United States in protest. Because at that time segregation in public transport was already banned, the southern states refused to implement the Supreme Court ruling. There are also mugshots of civil rights activist Malcolm X and Black Panther founder Huey Newton.
Mugshot by Rosa Parks. Her arrest sparked a series of actions by the civil rights movement. Imago Stock&people
The 1960s and 1970s as a whole provide many iconic mugshots. Also unforgettable: Johnny Cash’s posed mugshot in Folsom prison, where he recorded a live album in 1968.
And contemporary history? The photo of Donald Trump is only the preliminary culmination of a bizarre development that makes the pictures from prison almost a must-have for the Hollywood universe. Some well-known personalities have already been arrested for drugs, from David Bowie to Bruno Mars or Mick Jagger to Nick Nolte. The latter looks enraptured into the camera in his mugshot, his hair standing on end. He used to be the “sexiest man alive” and now, “ten years later, I look like a madman,” Nolte later wrote about the recording. Blatant counter-example to Nolte: Robert Downey Jr., because he grins happily at the camera. Mugshots for traffic violations abound too: Bill Gates, Keanu Reeves, Cher, Justin Bieber, Nina Dobrev, …
Nick Nolte’s mugshot is mocked during the Oscars (2003). APA/AFP/Timothy A Clary
Meanwhile, former gang member Jeremy Meeks began a career with a mugshot. His picture from 2014, which the police published after a raid, made the rounds quickly and uncontrolled. Just one keyword: “Hot felon”. That’s what Meeks was called, and after prison, a modeling career awaited the now 39-year-old. Perhaps this example also sums up recent mugshot history, at least from America and at least for the well-known people: they are not necessarily career killers.
Jeremy Meeks is now a model. Getty Images
It remains to be seen whether this thesis also applies to Trump. In any case, not only Trump is accused in Georgia, but also a number of other people in connection with alleged election interference. There are also pictures of these defendants. Exposed way too high, former President Barack Obama’s photographer Pete Souza scoffed on Instagram. And further: Obama would have taken the better pictures.
The defendants in Georgia. Archyde.com/Fulton County Sheriff’s Office
With its complex and privatized prison system, with its policy of arrests and with its rich criminal history, the socio-political role of the mugshots in America can probably be explained. But Austria also has a famous mugshot: the recording of the rapist Josef Fritzl. (duo)
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