Floating in a historical limbo without past or present
by Leslie Camhi @ Village Voice
Years ago, when pictures of missing children were still being printed on milk cartons in New York City, a friend and I shared a macabre preoccupation; we would imagine them morphing into the faces of wanted criminals hanging in the post office. In our fantasies, these two continents of the lost were joined together, each providing the key to the other's mystery. No such closure awaits the unwilling subjects in Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, a show and catalog (published by Steven Kasher/Steidl) of some 200 police photographs of suspected criminals drawn from Mark Michaelson's extensive collection. These alleged shoplifters, car thieves, forgers, and hookers float in a historical limbo without past or present, preserved in shame like flies in amber.
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