Rina and Ali, the boombastic team at KALW Informant, alerted me to a set of portraits from 1920’s Australia of individuals categorised as criminals.
These are portraits, not mugshots. Luminous, cathartic, full of weight. They’re the pre-August Sander, pre-Richard Avedon, pre-Irving Penn masterpieces of an anonymous police photographer.
PREVIOUSLY ON PRISON PHOTOGRAPHY
The collection is very similar to a set of mugshots from the archives of the Louisiana Division/City Archives in New Orleans.
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All images from the Historic Houses Trust website and the New South Wales Police Archives, Sydney.
Prison Photography 
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July 23, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Arresting Portraits of Bygone Criminals (or how we can all gawp guilt-free at ‘the Other’) « Prison Photography
[…] This set of portraits remind me a lot of the well-circulated and well-loved portraits of criminals from the archives of the Police and Justice Museum, Sydney Australia. When I posted about them in January, 2011, I pointed out the obvious fact that they went beyond the sole purpose of identification one expects of police photography; Portraits, Not Mugshots. […]
February 19, 2014 at 9:35 am
The French Doctor Who Photographed Penal Colonies To Expose Scandalous Conditions | Prison Photography
[…] difference and the enjoyment allowed by this historical (detached?) collection reminds me of those well-loved Australian police mugshots portraits. Beautiful character studies from absolutely abject […]