Missing person photos: To "smile" or not to "smile"??

[ewmon]

Other sciences – Forensics

 

We've all seen them — photos of missing persons — and they are almost always well-coiffed, well-dressed, well-made-up, posed, smiling, happy photos. But are they the most realistic depictions to publicize given that the person is kidnapped, abused, injured, unhappy, and/or without cosmetics? Solving abductions before they become murders is more important than vanity.

 

Why not publicize more "everyday" candid shots of missing people?

What about profile or ¾ shots? How often do we actually see someone full on?

If it's a child, what about a "from above" photo instead of a "same level" photo?

What are the pros and cons of these various depictions?

Is it that smiling photos show more dynamics of someone's facial expressions?

 

Without the grooming, cosmetics, etc, I think I wouldn't recognize this woman.

Ms Holly Bobo of Parsons TN abducted April 13th.

[swansont]

That presumes you have the foresight and desire to take such shots of people on the off chance they go missing. That's not the reason most people take pictures.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

If you want a grumpy, unflattering picture of them, why not just use their driver's license photo? They're invariably terrible.

[ewmon]

I'd think the authorities would have some expert knowledge about what kinds of photos to request, and apparently, they ask for the most "buffed up" shots available. Maybe it's psychological, where the public is more likely to be on the lookout for attractive people. Ref: Missing white woman syndrome.

[Marat]

The unspoken cultural assumption that what we 'really' look like is how we appear in a full face shot taken straight on in bright lighting with a smile on our face is an interestingly arbitrary notion. Why isn't my own idea of myself, as well as the official public image of me, not the back of my head, the image of my feet (quite individual), or a picture of the back of my left hand? Very young African children, when asked to draw an elephant, usually spontaneously draw it from an aerial view, whereas European children given the same task draw it from the side. Photos taken of people in the 19th century invariably showed them glaring sternly and proudly into the camera, but never smiling, since the assumption then was that the canonical way people 'look' is how they appear when they have composed themselves to appear dignified. No doubt an enormous cultural and psychological shift is represented in the fact that we now assume we should look friendly in photos.

 

Another odd thing you can notice if you look at pictures of people arranged by age is that they all look genuinely happy up until about age 25, and after that their smiles start to look strained. Why is this? Does the ultimately tragic nature of human existence begin to dawn on people after that age?

 

To publish a standard photo of someone to guide searchers can be quite misleading when they are looking for a dead body, since once the musculature can no longer tense up to compose our face in the usual way we seek to present ourselves to the world, we don't look anything like ourselves. It is always astonishing to compare photos of people in life with the same person just a few moments after death; television and movies give a highly misleading idea of how different dead people look than living ones, and the usual fictional trope, 'I thought he was sleeping but it turned out he was dead!' could never happen. For example, since it requires effort to keep your mouth closed (as I am inadvertently illustrating in this post, I'm afraid), dead people do not close their mouths as they do in the world of film. Generally the dead look more like a melted version of their living selves, for which a photo taken during life is little aid in identification.