CROOKS LIKE US by Peter Doyle - 1920s Sydney Police Mugshots.

This book was on my Christmas Wish List.

MJ gifted me this fabulous book. I've been entranced by the images, the stories, the squalor, the everything ...

Peter Doyle has written an exciting book that pulls the bark off Sydney's family trees. Crooks Like Us uses glass negatives of photographs taken just after arrest and before going before court. Normally the practice is that mug shots, front and side, are taken either at the station after processing, charging or trial or sometimes at prison. In Doyle's book the crooks are still in their street clothes, uncharged, startlingly surprised at arrest, still high from flight, the drugs, the theft or the load up.

Character is written all over their faces. They are our father's father's father or our mother's mother's mother, perhaps once removed, probably by force, but they are who we are.

The black-and-white photographs in Doyle's selection stare out at us like ghosts with stories to share but you have to use some of your own imagination to fill in the gaps ... read more HERE

Peter Doyles 'City of Shadows' intrigued and fascinated. 

He's done it again. Not with only the images of the blank faces, the poverty, the razor gangs, the crime, the stories of the cocaine that was readily available in Sydney ...

NO it's the fashions, the hair styles, the shoes, the elements, the cars, the backgrounds ... this book is a total visual feast of how it once was.