Dueling sets of images of Baltimore native Luigi Mangione have become ubiquitous in recent weeks — the official police mugshots taken after the 26-year-old was accused of fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and fanciful renderings on social media of the so-called “patron saint of health care justice.”

Mangione has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism in the Dec. 4 slaying of Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street.

The photographs might be of the same person, but the stories they tell couldn’t be more different.

The official police photos of Mangione in traffic cone-orange and navy blue jumpsuits appear intended to convey the serious nature of the offense with which he has been charged, according to a former New York City police detective and two photography instructors from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

In the mugshots, Mangione is unsmiling, staring straight at the camera or in sharp profile. His face is stubbled with an incipient beard, he appears to be developing a unibrow, and his eyes are hooded.

The FBI has issued a set of guidelines on how suspects should be photographed for mug shots, instructions intended to result in an image that accurately depicts a suspect’s appearance while remaining emotionally neutral.

But experts said that even when police photographers adhere to those guidelines, small differences in the way the photograph is taken can subtly alter the impression the image conveys.

“I could show you five different photos of the same person taken by five investigative agencies and they would all look different,” said retired New York City detective Scot Rosenthal. “Some might show facial blemishes, while others might not.”

The photo of Mangione wearing a navy jumpsuit departs from the FBI guidelines, according to Bill Gaskins, the founder and director of MICA’s Photography + Media & Society program, because a bright light to Mangione’s left appears to throw the opposite side of his face into shadow, an effect associated with something obscured or hidden from view.

“His eyes also imply a low camera angle that require his chin to be at a higher angle than normal,” Gaskins said. “That could be read as an arrogant expression by some.”

Luigi Mangione depicted as a saint

Compare that to the Instagram image of Mangione as quite literally a saint created by the Egyptian graphic artist Mohamed Gadelrab.

In the rendition, Mangione is still unsmiling but his expression is serene. His head is surrounded by a halo and he is richly dressed in green and cream-colored robes. His right hand is raised in benediction, while his left rests on the sacred heart of Jesus emblazoned on his chest.

The image received 2,140 likes in less than 24 hours. While some comments accuse the artist of glorifying murder, other posters said “It was inevitable,” or declared, “In Luigi we trust.”

Nonetheless, both sets of images have something in common; neither, strictly speaking, is objective. Both are framed in a way that has the potential to sway the sympathies of today’s viewers — and tomorrow’s jurors.

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“Mug shots are supposed to be objective records of individuals taken into police custody,” the California defense attorney Tsion Chudnovsky wrote in a July blog post, “but sometimes, they can be manipulated to make a person look guilty. This manipulation can happen through various techniques, such as darkening African American faces, using shadows and lighting, and other methods influencing public perception.”

That’s the reason that some law enforcement agencies, including the San Francisco Police Department, have stopped releasing mug shots publicly.

“Little things like a slight up or down angle can create shadows that read as ‘sinister’ even with standardized lighting,” said Nate Larson, who chairs MICA’s Photography Department.

“A small thing like choosing one photographic moment over another can also influence our interpretation of a person’s character. There’s a lot of unseen power in these small decisions to shape associations.”

In 2019, for instance, the Portland Police Department became embroiled in controversy after it used editing software to remove facial tattoos from a photo of Tyrone Allen, who was suspected of having committed a series of bank robberies.

The image was altered to more closely resemble surveillance videos that showed a robber without tattoos. The doctored picture was then placed in a photo line-up — and at least two witnesses identified Allen as the robber.

History of mugshots remains fraught

But the culprit behind Photoshopped mugshots isn’t always the police. Sometimes it is the news media.

In 1994, a prominent editor issued a public apology after murder suspect O.J. Simpson’s mug shot appeared on the cover of Time magazine. If readers didn’t make note of the credit line, which identified the image as “a photo illustration,” they wouldn’t have suspected that the photo had been doctored to make Simpson’s skin tone darker than it really was.

Amidst charges of racism, Time’s editor replied that the image was intended to raise the mug shot “to the level of art.”

Though the images on social media are explicitly expressions of opinion and don’t pretend to model real life, posts on Instagram, X and other sites trouble some observers for different reasons.

Why is Luigi Mangione a heartthrob?

Rosenthal and Gaskins noted that it didn’t take long before Mangione’s good looks became a major theme on social media. Posters swooned over Mangione’s supposed resemblance to movie stars Timothee Chalamet and Jake Gyllenhaal.

In Gainesville, Florida, hundreds of university students participated in a Luigi Mangione lookalike contest. And less than a week after the shooting, some people had already gotten tattoos celebrating the shooting suspect.

While acknowledging that Mangione is innocent until proven guilty, Rosenthal worried that social influencers are “putting together and fabricating a story of a cult hero” that bears almost no resemblance to reality and that could make it difficult to eventually convene a panel of twelve unbiased jurors.

Meanwhile, Gaskins thinks the sympathetic coverage of a white, privileged, well-educated young man exposes America’s social and cultural fault lines.

“Luigi Mangione is being humanized in ways that are not accorded to people who are outside of his social class or to people who are outside of his race,” he said.

“We have access to his valedictorian speech [from Gilman School] and to his vacation photos. He is being presented as a troubled person, not as a criminal person.”

Even more disturbing, Gaskins said, and unlike many people accused of crimes, Mangione is being discussed exclusively as an individual, not as a typical example of a racial or social group.

As he put it: “He is not seen as representative of all white males his age.”

Have a news tip? Contact Mary Carole McCauley at [email protected] and 410-332-6704.