In an episode of Arrested Development, David Cross’s character, the speciously gay psychiatrist-turned-aspiring actor Tobias Funkë, has a series of desperate, over-literal and hilarious headshots done. In each of the four of them, Tobias stands in front of a mottled blue photo backdrop, eyebrows arched, head cocked in childish apology, alternately bedecked as an office worker clutching a green folder, a doctor complete with head mirror, a headband-sporting tennis player, and an S&M guy in a leather vest and ballgag.

It’s funny as hell, not just because of how David Cross is gamely holding his own leash as if he’s offering it to you, but because it’s only vaguely unrealistic. All over the world (but let’s be honest — mostly in L.A.), desperate actors and terrible photographers produce embarrassingly overstated headshots that are (bless their little cotton socks) more like car crashes than calling cards. From the transgressions of the 80s and 90s (leather jackets, bare chests and cycling shorts anyone?) to more modern Funkë-esque costume pictures (It’s my E.R. shot!), headshot photography can be long on irony and short on sense.

Last year comedian Patrick Borelli and photographer Douglas Gorenstein decided to exploit the unintentional hilarity of awful American-style headshot photography by publishing Holy Headshot, a so-called “celebration of America’s undiscovered talent”.

(more…)