Election 2024: Image World (3)

The Mug Shot Seen Round the World

Made at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, Georgia during the course of his arrest on August 24, 2023, the mug shot of Donald J. Trump became, instantly, the most consequential photograph ever taken of a current or former U.S. president.

Not because it is a better photo than, say, Mathew Brady’s studio portrait of Abraham Lincoln, to which Lincoln himself credited his election. But because of the momentous, indeed historic nature of the occasion of its production: Trump’s indictment on RICO (racketeering) charges — along with 18 co-conspirators — for an assortment of alleged crimes related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

This image immediately went viral, due not to any inherent pictorial quality but simply as a result of its existence. It automatically represents a defining moment not just in Trump’s personal biography but in the history of this country and, by extension, the history of democracy itself. While I’d find it interesting to learn what brand of mug-shot setup got used, and entertaining to hear from the jail staffer who made the exposure on what I assume is a pre-set, auto-focused digital camera, that’s really irrelevant. They pressed the button; lens culture has already done — and will continue to do — the rest.

More Trump indictments, more arrests, and more mug shots probably await. None will have a comparable impact and resonance, though some may come close — the first in prison garb, for example, and/or the first with his hair cut and his baldness revealed. But this is, inarguably, the one for the ages.

Here it is:

Donald Trump mugshot, Fulton County Jail, Atlanta, GA, 8-24-23

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Whoever you are, dear reader, I guarantee you this: Depending on your age, you will see this image hundreds and possibly thousands of times over the course of the rest of your life. T-shirts and coffee mugs, book jackets and magazine covers, print and online news articles, his eventual obituaries … lodged irrevocably in your memory. Get used to it.

Sociologist Howard Becker offers the following helpful advice:

Every part of the photographic image carries some information that contributes to its total statement; the viewer’s responsibility is to see, in the most literal way, everything that is there and respond to it. To put it another way, the statement the image makes — not just what it shows you, but the mood, moral evaluation and causal connections it suggests — is built up from those details. A proper “reading” of a photograph sees and responds to them consciously. (“Photography and Sociology,” Studies in Visual Communication, Vol. 1, no. 1, Fall 1974, p. 5.)

So let’s start with a basic description. We have a square-shaped full-color image, dominated by a head-and-shoulders portrait of an elderly white male. He wears a blue suit jacket, a white shirt, and a knotted red necktie. He has carefully combed yellow hair, and his complexion has a distinctive orange cast. He leans forward, so that his image fills the frame, with his head tilted slighted downward. He stares directly into the camera. His lips are pressed together.

Fulton County, GA, Sheriff’s Office logo

The only other visual element in the image is a slightly out-of-focus logo in the shape of an official badge whose legend cannot be read. This appears to be not automatically embedded in the image by the digital photographic system used in its production but physically painted on the wall facing the camera, behind and slightly to the right of where the subject stands.

The subject has a furrowed brow and a scowling, slightly menacing expression on his face. The overall mood of the image is grim. Though modest in size compared to the main subject, the iconic logo (even with its details unreadable) suggests that the subject has become enmeshed in the criminal justice system — a situation of inherent submission to law enforcement and thus weakness in relation thereto. The subject’s expression therefore seems intended to project fortitude and defiance in that perilous situation, along with anger and indignation at finding himself in such straits.

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With most mug shots, various visual cues make it clear that the legal system has taken charge of the subject. This one, to the contrary, indicates that the subject has, if only for the moment, taken charge of the system. It feels less like a document, and more like a transactional, collaborative portrait. Not a pleasant, cheerful, or attractive portrait, by any means, but a portrait nonetheless — not just a likeness but an authentic presentation of self.

Keith Olbermann has suggested that Trump practiced this pose in the mirror before surrendering for booking, fingerprinting, and the making of this mugshot. At timestamp 4:30 in this episode of his podcast, he even proposes that Trump lowered his head slightly to hide his multiple chins.

I would go further, to suggest that Trump and his advisors studied the published mugshots of the indictees who preceded him for booking during the previous days, prepping and practicing not only his expression but his pose, including his posture and even his proximity to the lens.

We can verify this by comparing the Trump mugshot to mugshots of some other alleged conspirators made with the same apparatus during the same short time period. In those, the subjects’ shadows appear on the wall behind them, indicating that they are standing close to or against the wall, whereas no shadow whatsoever appears behind Trump. This positioning also reduces the harsh glare of the flash, so that Trump’s face appears well lit.

Finally, because he moved forward a bit, the Sheriff’s Office logo in the Trump mugshot appears smaller, backgrounded, almost incidental, thus less imposing — and sufficiently out of focus to render its legend unreadable. Whereas it appears larger in relation to the other subjects (e.g, Mark Meadows, below), its text in sharp focus and clearly legible: “Sheriff / Fulton County Sheriff’s Office / Est. 1854 / Patrick Labat.”

Mark Meadows mugshot, Fulton County Jail, Atlanta, GA, 8-24-23

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Given Trump’s media savvy, plus the fact that the Trump campaign had an extensive product line of mugshot merch set up and ready to go live as soon as the image got released for publication, none of that strikes me as coincidental. However they arranged it, they needed — and got — the perfect money shot.

According to the campaign, they raked in $7.1 million in sales within the first 24 hours of the mugshot’s release. That puts this image already in the running not just for most reproduced photo ever but also highest-grossing photo of all time. With both the Maga cult and the liberal-left reveling in it, the sky’s the limit.

Trump Campaign, “Never Surrender” mugshot merchandise, screenshot, August 2023

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Note: According to some knowledgeable sources, coypright and subsidiary rights to this image remain vested in the law-enforcement agency that has circulated it — in this case, presumably the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office or whatever larger entity encompasses it. Nonetheless, I would argue that — even this soon after its issuance — it has entered the public domain. Unless the issuing agency immediately and forcefully pursues enforcement of any presumed copyright and licensing rights, in order to establish a good-faith effort to protect those rights, I consider it likely that the courts will consider the combination of several factors as overriding any claim of copyright violation.

Those factors include (a) production of this image by a government agency subsidized by public funding; (b) immediate and deliberate international dissemination of the image through the mass media; (c) minimal formal difference between this image and countless other such images made public by the same agency; (d) public interest in the image and the public’s right to know; and (e) the fact that any usage of the image automatically has political implications and thus enters the territory of constitutionally protected free speech. (Some of these fall within the parameters of the “fair use” exception to the protections of copyright law, while others fall outside those guidelines. Nonetheless, I anticipate that the courts would reject any attempt to restrict usage, even for patently commercial purposes.)

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A Bunch of Mugs

The mugshots of the rest of this particular contingent of The Gang That Couldn’t Think Straight will of course haunt them well into the afterlife, and deservedly so — they’re traitors, one and all, fully deserving of what’s happening to them.

With that said, their mugshots vary so widely in quality that I’m inclined to think that (a) they were made by different operators with (b) different levels of skill and experience, (c) possibly using two different camera setups and locations, within (d) a law-enforcement bureaucracy devoid of even a basic concern with quality control.

How else to explain the diversity of the 19 mugshots, made in the same building within a single week? Those of Trump and Meadows and the majority of the others share a certain quality level — relatively well-lit, with a bit of forehead glare yet all facial detail clear. But then there are those of John Eastman, Cathleen Latham, David Shafer, and several more, blasted by flash and all but washed out. No passport office would accept these; surprising that the Fulton County legal system considers them adequate.

Mugshot-Paloooza, Fulton County Jail, GA, 8-20-23

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Girls’ Night Out!

For the most part, these chumps from lower down on the insurrectionist food chain look understandably chagrined and depressed, often wearing deer-in-the-headlights expressions.

But two stand out from the rest by dint of conveying a radically different mood. The first is Jenna Ellis, former “senior legal adviser” to Trump, who proudly claims membership in what she called his “elite strike force team,” tasked with overturning the 2020 election:

Jenna Ellis mugshot, Fulton County Jail, Atlanta, GA, 8-23-23

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And the second is Trevian Kutti, former publicist to convicted sexual predator and pedophile R. Kelly and off-his-rocker-off-his-meds rapper Kanye West. Allegedly recruited by Harrison Floyd, the leader of Black Voices for Trump, Kutti traveled from Chicago down to Atlanta at Floyd’s request. She did so in order to falsely accuse and threaten poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, as part of an elaborate Trump-Giuliani attempt to frame them for election fraud:

Trevian Kutti, mugshot, Fulton County Jail, Atlanta, GA, 8-25-23

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Of course I have no idea what they were thinking while they got booked and these mugshots got made, but both Ellis and Kutti appear positively gleeful and even giddy, as if they’d stepped into a rental photo booth at a bachelorette party after the second batch of champagne corks popped and the doobies got passed around. Girls’ night out! I think they have some surprises coming — or, to put it in Trumpese, “They’re going to go through some things.”

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