Paolo Cirio: Criminal Data

Paolo Cirio’s video Criminal Data consists of a video essay and accompanying statement that probe the process and impact of the online dissemination of mugshots and criminal records. Commercial mugshot websites collect arrest photographs from local police, store them in searchable databases, and then charge people to remove their images. The photos are also used to train facial recognition software.

Cirio’s video presents a flythrough of grids constructed from thousands of blurred mugshots, interspersed with text raising questions about the effects of such public distribution. The images come from a dataset of ten million photos that the artist originally aggregated by cloning six mugshot websites for his project Obscurity (2016–19). The mugshots circulate on these sites even though many of the people have been found innocent.

Criminal Data envelops the viewer in seemingly endless arrays of scrolling thumbnail-sized images, underscoring the reduction of humanity, identity, and social complexity to data points marketed for profit. The mass of people represented and the graphic style that “locks” their images in walls or fields of rows illustrate the erasure and devaluation of individuality. The project is a culmination of Cirio’s previous works, which advocate for the legal right to remove personal information from search engines and promote privacy policy.