If newspapers are going to build circulation again, they'll need to show more photos, and few things are more interesting to look at than photos of criminals (above).
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Dramatic crime photos like the one above are better suited for magazines than newspapers. Newspaper readers prefer something more sedate. They like to see unposed criminal faces that they can study at leisure. Maybe that's because most people want to confirm their belief that they're good at judging people by their appearance.
I like crime portraits that beg to tell a story. Take the one above, for example. The woman looks intelligent. In another life she might have been the District Attorney rather than a prisoner in the dock. How did she end up in jail? Did a man lead her astray? Was she born bad? Is she actually evil? You want to know more about her, and that sells newspapers.
Some criminals (above) look bad through and through. You need pictures of those people, too. Maybe seeing them caught and held up for public display satisfies the part of us that yearns to grab a torch and a pitchfork and storm Frankenstein's castle.
Most newspaper photos are served up in bad resolution, but that's an asset, not a liability. Marshal McLuhan said that old black and white TV was more emotionally involving than modern color TV. The mental effort we were forced to exert in order to construct images from the old TV scan lines compelled us to get involved with what we were seeing. Well, dot printing has the same effect.
Hazy newspaper reproduction forces us to become involved with the pictures. Newspapers are actually a perfect medium for a certain type of picture. By "certain type" I mean that the subject matter has to be at least potentially interesting, something which current newspaper photos never are.
Ack delete these posts
ReplyDeletehttp://animationresources.org
The faces on these criminals would be quite fun to caricature too. And put on a tee shirt.....and sell on cafepress! How cool would that be? Of course they would need a clever caption to go with the caricatures.
ReplyDeleteHistorical note: Esther Eggers was mildly famous back in the day. She would lure men into alleyways, then her brother would hit them over the back of the head with a brick.
ReplyDeleteApparently she was so bad that other criminals complained about her to the police. You can just imagine it, this horrible woman giving honest crooks a bad name.
I disagree on the second woman. I'd like to hear you elaborate on your opinion. To me she doesn't look so much bad as disturbed. She could be a bad person, but not necessarily.
ReplyDeleteWalter Smith, on the other hand looks completely vicious, determined to be a bad person. There needs to be more movie villains like this and less who are the sort who cackle and have strange grins.
Steve: I just looked up animationresources.org. It looks great! So THIS is your newest project, even newer than the youtube cartoon show. Man, you're a busy guy! I wish you much luck with it!
ReplyDeletePseudo: Esther Eggers...sounds interesting! I'll have to look her up!
GW: Interesting! True, she could be disturbed rather than downright evil. Then again, the two sometimes overlap.
In my opinion it should be possible to put certain kinds of disturbed people on trial for serious crimes.
I think that prisoners with life sentences should be life drawing models
ReplyDeleteI would have said that the first woman was evil & the second only bad.
ReplyDelete@ Steve Worth lol That's a great idea for a gag cartoon. Imagine all the terrified art students trying to keep their hands steady while the naked psychotic serial killers keep eye balling them.
ReplyDelete