100 Heads Challenge Day 5: Mugshots!

[thagandizzle]

Today's theme was suggested by my wife and, for lack of anything better, I went with it. I ended up feeling a little weird about the image selection process. It's different when they're not models or friends who have volunteered. These people were forced to be photographed as part of the arrest process, you know?

So, I was kind of picky about sourcing the images and tried to stay away from people who had been arrested for things like drug possession or prostitution--both because I have Opinions about those issues and because I feel like they are grayer areas than a lot of other potential crimes. Most of the people I drew were convicted of stabbing. I found a local newspaper website from a smallish city in Illinois that archives all of the mugshots every month from local arrests, so it's a pretty well-documented set of source images.

I definitely tried to pick interesting faces, but it was more important to me to be thoughtful about the fact that I am drawing images of real human people who didn't volunteer for their faces to be displayed online. All that said, shocked mullet man in the bottom right was my favorite. He looks SO SHOCKED that he was arrested for stabbing his stepmom!


Click to enlarge:

Comments

Re: faces

[thagandizzle]

Yeah... I didn't at first. Last night, I picked some totally random mugshots and queued them up for today but I kept thinking about it afterward. It's easy to dehumanize strangers and it's even easier when those strangers have potentially done bad things. Acknowledging each person's inherent humanity and right to dignity is something that's important to me. I don't mind randomly selecting images of models or actors who have been paid to have their pictures taken and shared. But these people, while they made choices that led them to their eventual convictions, didn't make THAT choice.

I know I'm getting into the Bad Place because the points system is too archaic to factor in the complexity of modern life, but I can at least try my best to accrue as many positive points as I can!

Re: faces

[oldtoadwoman]

Having Doug and Chidi as examples has actually helped chill me out a little. We should all try to be good people, but not at the expense of making ourselves utterly miserable (and conversely making those around us miserable as well) in the process.

You seem to be striving for a reasonable level of good.

Oh, wow, I just had a Holy Motherforking Shirtballs moment. I just realized that based on the points system, Mindy St Clair is officially the highest-ranking human in something like five hundred years and she got there not by being a good person but by being rich and having a single moment of generosity which technically helped the most people.

Re: faces

[thagandizzle]

It's true! I'd be ok with a Medium Place of my own. it's not that much different from normal life, you know? Like, I definitely have been burning through old episodes of Martha Stewart Living as background noise while I do these drawings and if that's not a Medium Place-ass show, I don't know what is.