…of the Justice & Police Museum
Posted in Femme Fatale, mug shots on Apr 2nd, 2009
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Photographed 10 January 1924 at the State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, NSW
During the early 20th century many unmarried or widowed women with children lived in circumstances of abject poverty. Unable to work during a time when there were no welfare payments, they were often driven to commit desperate acts. Whole columns of the [...]
Posted in Femme Fatale, mug shots on Aug 8th, 2008
Photographed 3 June 1927 at the State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, NSW
The care and management of young offenders has always presented difficulties for the police and courts. Authorities are reluctant to send teenagers to prison and seek to give them an opportunity to turn their lives around. During the 1920s the courts would often [...]
Posted in mug shots on Apr 22nd, 2008
The other day I was alerted to a batch of extraordinary photographs from the 1920s by a member of staff at the museum, named Gareth Malone. It was explained to me that these images had been damaged… all of them suffered from chipped corners, hairline fractures and surface abrasions. When I viewed these offender [...]
Posted in mug shots on Mar 19th, 2008
Sometimes when looking at one of the many intriguing mug-shot photographs in the museum’s forensic photography collection, it is a detail off to the left or right of the main subject, an accidental or spontaneous happening that has unexpectedly entered the frame which grabs your attention. In Camera Lucida cultural theorist Roland Barthes named this [...]