'NIST Special Database 18 is being distributed for use in development and testing of automated mugshot identification systems.'

Imagine you are a forensic scientist, detective or journalist-artist, actor

Ask this:

Who are they? Where did they live? What might have got them into this situation?

What did they enjoy in life? Who did they love, who did they hate? What

Class did they/do they belong to? Are they rich or poor? When was the

photo taken? What might it mean for them and their family/community that this happened? What do these images mean to you?

What can you deduce from looking at and really ‘listening’ to the image?

Finally, pose as the person in the photo you have selected, copy their posture, facial expression, hair style if possible.

Get someone else to take your ‘mugshot’, replicate it as closely as possible.

When you have finished upload your own image to the padlet and tell us what you have learnt about the person in the image and the image itself.

I sensed confusion and thoughtfulness when I adopted this pose, almost disbelief or thinking through of what is happening. The shirt is well pressed, maybe a prison shirt but it looks clean and ironed, the spectacles are a bit wonky, suggesting a fight or they have broken. Though the image is black and white it looks like he has pale blue eyes and a stigmatism. The haircut suggest the 1950s or early 1960s. He is clean shaven, looks like he has looked after himself and concerned about the neatness of his appearance, perhaps he is a clark or an accountant, a middle class man? I would think the arrest brings shame or a sense of injustice, he does not look bored or used to this. but he also looks tired, as if there is not much fight in him, adopting the pose I felt fatigue. Above all, I see and feel in that pose 'What am I going to do, what's going to happen to me?'. Of course this can all be projection, but I am thinking it through in the act of looking, posing, searching and listening to the image aware that this is an unreliable act of interpretation. I asked my partner and their interpretation was very different, they sensed a look of superiority and disdain.