(Press-News.org) New research from the University of Cincinnati brings into focus the connection between routine, police station mug shots and the marketing-savvy snapshots captured by the fashion police.
Stephanie Sadre-Orafai, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor and socio-cultural anthropologist, suggests so in the presentation of her research, "Beyond Types: Animating Evidence and Potential in Booking Photographs." The Nov. 17 presentation is part of the session, "Unsettling Accounts – Photographs, Traces and Evidence" – at the 110th annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Montreal.
Sadre-Orafai conducted her research at a leading fashion casting agency in New York, comparing how police take mug shots with photos snapped by booking agents in the fashion industry. Neither images are taken by high-end photographers, she says, yet the bare-bones, head-and-profile mug shots are capturing an image that is similar to the Polaroids used to scout for appropriate fashion models for a particular gig.
"The data that I'm presenting is about the choices that are being made about how to frame these images," says Sadre-Orafai. "Casting in the fashion industry is a very recent form of expertise that is being developed, yet shares much in common with the history of criminal photography" she says.
Sadre-Orafai's presentation evolves from a chapter that she contributed to the book, "Fashion Crimes: Dressing for Deviance," edited by Joanne Turney and currently in press with international publisher I.B. Tauris in London.
In examining the intersection of image between mug shots and snapshots of fashion portfolios, she says she looked through the police mug shots published in the book, "Least Wanted: A Century of American Mug Shots," a collection of thousands of ordinary mug shots in a book edited by contemporary photographer Steven Kasher and editorial art director Mark Michelson (Steidl & Partners, 2006).
"With similar lighting, poses, branding (the casting agency here replacing the police department name), and meticulous record of bodily measurements and photographic sitting dates, casting images share much in common with criminal mug shots," states Sadre-Orafai in the chapter she contributed to "Fashion Crimes: Dressing for Deviance."
"Iconic and instantly readable, both are documentary portraits used to fix identities motivated by the specter or promise of transformation: in the case of the casting image, the glamour of the fashion photograph; for the mug shot, the future recidivist in disguise. Both are images of potential, overwhelmingly charged by association," wrote Sadre-Orafai, in her chapter titled, "Mug Shot/Headshot – Danger, Beauty and the Temporal Politics of Booking Photography."
She says future research will examine the field of criminal profiling.
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More than 1,800 visitors can move smoothly through the Georgia Aquarium's new AT&T Dolphin Tales exhibit, entering and leaving through the same set of doors. Their experience is not by accident though -- before the exhibit opened, logistics experts at the Georgia Institute of Technology carefully studied how guests would move and recommended ways to improve their experiences while minimizing congestion.
"We offered Georgia Aquarium leaders accurate predictions on how the new AT&T Dolphin Tales exhibit would impact guest flow within the aquarium and how to optimize the ...
Don McCauley of the Free Publicity Focus Group and Danielle Hampson of eBroadcastMedia.com, founders of Book Marketing, announced today The Authors Show radio and TV weekly broadcast schedule.
Book Marketing, branded as 'The Authors Marketing Powerhouse', allows authors and publishers the opportunity to upload photos, bios, book covers, video and book trailers. The site also offers discussion forums, segmented special interest groups and allows for event listings. Each author can develop a personalized page. In addition the site allows for integration with Facebook and ...
BOSTON (November 14, 2011) -- Feeding older mice a lower glycemic index (GI) diet consisting of slowly-digested carbohydrates delays the onset of age-related, sight-threatening retinal lesions, according to a new study from the Laboratory for Nutrition and Vision Research at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University.
The researchers studied middle-aged and older mice that consumed either a higher or lower GI diet. Mice fed the lower GI diet developed fewer and less-severe age-related lesions in the retina than the mice ...
An estimated 24 million Americans now have diabetes, with the number expected to grow at least 5 percent annually in future years. One serious consequence of the disease can be vision loss or blindness. The earlier diabetes is caught and appropriate lifestyle changes and treatment begin, the better the chance of avoiding vision loss and other health consequences.
"Too often, people are not aware of any vision problems." said Dr. Binh Q. Nguyen "Effective treatments, including annual eye exams, can reduce severe vision loss in diabetics significantly."
In ...
Led by Professor Dr. Martin Bentz, Bonn archeologists began un¬earthing one of Greek antiquity's largest craftsmen's quarters in the Greek colonial city of Selinunte (7th-3rd century B.C.) on the island of Sicily during two excavation campaigns in September 2010 and in the fall of 2011. The project is conducted in collaboration with the Italian authorities and the German Archaeological Institute. Its goal is to study an area of daily life in ancient cities that has hitherto re¬ceived little attention.
"To what extent the ancient Greeks already had something like "commercial ...
Boston, MA – The use of specific medications following a heart attack has been shown to reduce cardiovascular events and mortality, however; while highly effective, the rate of adherence to these medications is poor. Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) evaluated whether eliminating co-payments for these medications would increase adherence and improve outcomes in patients who have had a heart attack. The findings will be presented as a Late Breaking Clinical Trial at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions on November 14 and simultaneously published ...
Axceleon presents at HP-CAST 17 (Hewlett-Packard Consortium for Advanced Scientific and Technical computing users group) in Seattle, Washington, on November 10th-11th. HP-CAST is being held in conjunction with the SC2011 supercomputing show also being held in Seattle.
The topic of the Axceleon presentation is "Opportunities and Challenges for Image Processing on the Cloud". Cloud based computing has been used in many industries over the years and is now rapidly expanding to the 3D Animation Industry.
"We are very pleased to be invited for a third time ...
The heated debate surrounding the German "state Trojan" software for the online monitoring of telecommunication between citizens shows that the concealed observation of our private decisions provokes public disapproval. However, as a recent experimental study has revealed, observing and being observed are integral components of our social repertoire. Human beings show a preference for social partners whose altruistic behaviour they have been able to confirm for themselves. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and the University of Cologne ...
Bon Vivant is a concierge & lifestyle management service with an emphasis on providing great personal service. They specialise in every travel, leisure and lifestyle need that you don't have the time, inclination or expertise to do yourself so you can maximise your free time.
Whilst catering to London's elite, time-poor professionals and prestigious companies with ongoing support on a membership basis, Bon Vivant is delighted to announce that they now offer bespoke concierge and lifestyle management services on an ad hoc basis and to temporary visitors to London, ...
In order to develop glass with new characteristics, experts select about ten compounds from potential elements, mix them and then heat the powder. They heat it in a furnace until it is soft, then they pour it into a mould and let it cool slowly and in a controlled fashion, down to room temperature. During that process small samples from the viscous glass are taken to test it: how viscous is it? How well does it wet metals? How does it crystallize out? To produce the glass samples by hand and to test them requires a lot of time: one employee needs approximately two weeks ...