Small Town Noir is the history of a small American town pieced together through the lives and crimes of its citizens.
Daniel Dalton / BuzzFeed / Diarmid Mogg
He bid on them for no other reason than he was interested in mugshots, the strange little portraits taken as a matter of routine by law enforcement agencies across America.
He said: "They're made haunting by the passage of time. I'm fascinated by the range of expressions, the haircuts, the clothes. Such faces. Who were they? What had they done? What were their lives like?"
Charles F. Esolda, arrested for raising false fire alarms, 12 May 1958. “I don’t know why I did it!” he told the police.
Diarmid Mogg / Via smalltownnoir.com
When the photos arrived they still had their police file cards attached: name, age, crime, date and place of arrest. They ranged from the 1930s up to the 1960s, and they were from the same small town: New Castle, Pennsylvania, a place 80km northwest of Pittsburgh and one that Mogg had never heard of.
