AN EARLY Vegas-era Elvis Presley tries to hide behind aviator-style specs, but his baby-face pouty lips seem parted in puzzlement.

A feisty Frank Sinatra stares defiantly from a photo taken in 1938, looking more like a young thug than the King of the Crooners he was eventually to become.

The Godfather Marlon Brando (below) sizzles as he looks away from the camera.

These are some of the famous faces featuring in an exhibition being staged here by British photographer Russell Young, 48, himself famous for being the snapper who did the cover for pop singer George Michael's Faith album back in the 1980s.

They are no standard celebrity shots. Some of them are real police mugshots of the stars, blown up to a huge size as silkscreens on canvas and jazzed up with bright colours such as pink, blue and yellow.

The celebrities are frozen in time, some snapped post-arrest, complete with demeaning criminal stats tags, and in various stages of intoxication, anger or bewilderment.

Young's images of celebrities in their most unglamorous moments were first exhibited in 2003 in California in a solo exhibition called Pig Portraits.

Now, some of those "anti-celebrity" portraits, as he calls them, make their Asian debut through the Russell Young Exhibition which opens today at Collectors Contemporary gallery. There are 36 canvases on display.

In an e-mail interview with Life!, Young, who has left his days as a celebrity photographer and music video director behind to be an artist, says: "I have always been interested by the way crime and fame collide. In my art I am not holding a mirror up to myself, I am holding a mirror up to society."

Gary Sng, co-owner of Collectors Contemporary who is also representing Young in Asia, says he was drawn to the work because "it looks very real. Even though it's meant to be gritty, there is deep beauty in it. Portraying the bad boy image isn't easy".

Young obtained the celebrity mugshots by trawling through eBay, collecting them through newspapers and various other legal avenues, and was sometimes even handed the photos by the celebrities themselves.

He then enlarged the faces in the photos making them larger than life by using a photocopier and film.

The Russell Young Exhibition at Collectors Contemporary, 5 Jalan Kilang Barat, 01-03 Petro Centre, runs till March 21. Opening hours are 11am to 7pm daily except Mondays. Viewing on Mondays is by appointment only. Call 6878-0103 or visit www.collectors.com.sg