?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,500 - $ 7,500
(CALFORNIA -- CRIME) Album containing 966 mug shots of male criminals in Folsom Prison during the height of the Depression. Most of the criminals were guilty of economically-based crimes -- larceny, buglary, robbery, and passing fictitious checks; pimps, arsonists and murderers also make occasional appearances. Silver prints, 2 3/4x2 1/4 inches (7x5.7 cm.), each with handwritten notations regarding the subject's name, background, age, physical characteristics, occupation, nativity, the nature of his crime, and length of sentence. Thick folio, cloth. Circa 1930
Each of the Crime albums Swann has offered has had special characteristics, be they aesthetic, historic or social. The iconography in this album predominantly features bedraggled laborers; another period type, the con man (who is impeccably turned out in suit and tie), is under-represented. One of the distinguishing features of this assortment of photographs, however, is the large number of Latino subjects, a reality of the growing migration of Mexican families to the U.S.
While day laborers or guest workers found jobs in the mining, agriculture and construction industries, in California, during the first World War, by the 1920s the federal government implemented new, more restrictive measures, which limited the migration of both Mexicans and Asians. The harsh reality of the Depression is underscored by the unprecedented number of men who were incarcerated for "cash crimes " -- robbery, theft, burglary, forgery, or larceny.
