Icon Jeanine Lebrun, public domain photograph

A mug shot or mugshot is a photographic portrait of a person from the waist up, typically taken after a person is arrested made with a purpose to have a photographic record for identification purposes by victims, the public and investigators. A typical mug shot is two-part, with one side-view, and one front-view. The paired arrangement may have been inspired by the 1865 prison portraits taken by Alexander Gardner of accused conspirators in the Lincoln assassination trial, though Gardner's photographs were full-body portraits with only the heads turned for the profile shots. The earliest mugshot photos of prisoners may have been taken in Belgium in 1843 and 1844. In the UK, the police of London started taking mugshots in 1846. By 1857, the New York City Police Department had a gallery where daguerreotypes of criminals were displayed.

Montreal has made itself known worldwide with its budding sex culture. In the most liberal province of the already liberal Canada, it has often been compared to Amsterdam by more than one objective critic. Montreal's red-light district, which began as a necessary evil to protect innocent girls from the dangers of lusty sailors, is as much of a long-standing Montreal tradition as its smoked meat, bagels and poutine. Historically, several factors have lead to the trend of traveling to Montreal to get down and groovy.