Steidlville

Punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants. Hookers, stooges, grifters and goons. These are the Least Wanted. Men and women. Elderly and adolescent. Rich and poor. Mostly poor. These photographs are part of a collection of over 10,000 American criminal mugshots ranging from the 1870s to the 1970s gathered by Mark Michaelson, an award-winning editorial art director and artist living in New York City. LeastWanted is a poetic encyclopedia of discarded portraits set free from the steel file-drawers of police departments and prisons. Created as utilitarian instruments, they survive as extraordinary visual artifacts. Bored, sheepish, proud, coy, tough, defiant, bounced, bloodied, bruised, broken and innocent (until proven guilty) faces. They stare back at the camera with unmistakable individuality. This is central casting for the Late Late Show of a profoundly unvarnished reality. Small-timers. Fallen through the cracks. These images, meant to be destroyed when obsolete, are remnants of a bygone era of hard-copy originals: physical photographs, often accompanied by municipal ephemera. Glued to cards and manuscripts. Typed on and rubber stamped. Measured and fingerprinted. Documented and classified.