A very enjoyable read….
Police have been using the snapshots in criminal investigations since the advent of commercial photography
In the spring of 1841, just after finishing his inauguration speech, William Henry Harrison became the first United States president to be photographed. The portrait was a daguerreotype, created with a newly invented process that produced a photograph in minutes rather than hours.
While Harrison’s image was lost to history, a photographer snapped the oldest surviving presidential photograph just two years later: a portrait of John Quincy Adams, taken over a decade after his time in office. Sitting in front of a fireplace and a stack of books, with a sharp gaze fixed just below the camera lens, the politician is portrayed with a stately solemnity.
Since then, many famous photos of presidents have become etched in the American psyche: Harry Truman holding the prematurely printed newspaper declaring his defeat in the 1948 election, Richard Nixon boarding his helicopter after resigning in 1974, George W. Bush learning of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, Barack Obama sitting in the Situation Room during the mission to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011.
During his term, Donald Trump also appeared in a number of memorable images. Soon, he may be the subject of a new photographic first: the presidential mug shot.
Last week, Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on charges likely involving a $130,000 payout made to an adult-film actress during the 2016 presidential election. He’s expected to turn himself in tomorrow, becoming the first former president to face criminal charges. (The first—and so far only—sitting president to be arrested was Ulysses S. Grant, who was pulled over for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage in 1872.)
Once Trump surrenders at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, he will likely be fingerprinted. But whether he’ll get a mug shot taken—and whether this image would then be released to the public—remains unclear.
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https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mug-shot-history-180981922/?_hsmi=253119698
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American civil rights activist Rosa Parks posing for a mug shot following her February 1956 arrest during the Montgomery bus boycott Universal History Archive / Getty Images
