Mug Shots and Bad Girls

The Birth of Series

I am working on a number of pieces right now and they are in various stages of completion that I am calling “Bad Girls”.   I have been fascinated for a long time with the discovery of a plethora of vintage photos featuring women in Mug Shots.  I study their faces with such a mixture of emotions.  I can’t help but wonder over the “back story” – what lead these women to the place that has them standing before a police station camera being photographed.  A permanent record of their “bad behavior”.   I am not talking about the widely publicized photos of celebrity brats acting out their angst over having too much fame too young.  I am talking more about the ones that look like a housewife, complete with rollers still in their hair, aprons dusted in flour – as if they were baking a cake and something in them just finally snapped.

 

I think about the journey that may have lead them to the snapping point.  As  a woman who has been through a myriad of life changes, and whose own journey has had some very rocky terrains.  And, as a woman who has suffered abuses in my past, and who fought hard to keep my children fed and clothed in my single years, I can’t help but wonder what these women did and what desperation brought them to it.

In a current climate in America especially right now, and the concern over women’s voices being heard, I am especially compelled to tell more of these “Bad Girls” stories.  So in the months to come I am working on pieces that are both 2D and 3D, and taking some creative liberty to work these Mug Shots into a more rounded story.  Some of them speak volumes by the sheer nature of the image captured in the moment, but some of them beg for more in depth telling of the tale.

“I Finally Fought Back”  10×10 Mixed Media on Panel by Dawna Kinne Magliacano

I think this series will have a wide spectrum of emotions stirred and that is what art should do, right?  I look forward to sharing as I move through creating them.

 

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