Portraiture and Identity- Camille Cummings

Forensic photography with an appendix on the anthropometric classification and identification. [ Plate 7 following p. 76] - 1890 - Alphonse BERTILLON - Inv. 91.8023.1

The introduction of the photograph, and in turn the introduction of the portrait, made popular the idea of social categorization and control. The early to mid 1800’s was a time when individual portraits were becoming readily available to all classes. With this being said, everyone began to gain access to the portraits of people beside themselves. The bourgeois class in particular was able to get what they thought was a better understanding of the lower classes.

The bourgeoisie class was able to access photographs of proletariat members of society and vise versa. However, for the bourgeoisie class, access to these photos meant that they were able to see and attempt to understand the way lower class members lived their lives.

It was in this time period that the idea of classifying criminals based on their appearance and body measurements became popular. Due to the fact that classes rarely mixed, the bourgeoisie almost always was introduced with photographs of criminals that were of lower class and a part of the greater metropolitan population. These introductions proved to separate the classes even more due to the fact that the bourgeois saw themselves in one way and people in classes bellow them in another. The wealthy were able to have photographs taken of them in their homes, while those of lower classes were only able to have photographers taken of them to be used as identification mug shots for crimes committed. 

The image above is a photograph by Alphonse Bertillon, in it, a man is pictured against a white wall with a measurement stick against his face. There is a profile and frontal view of the man with the measuring stick in the same place in both photographs. The man appears unhappy and under the impression that these photos will be used for identification purposes only.

This photo connects to the reading in that it is an identification photo that will be available to everyone. The bourgeois class will see this photo and the ans measurements and soon be under the impression that all criminals look somewhat like this man and have the same measurements. At this time, wealthy members were very impressionable, any portrait was scientific proof that the person existed and committed the crime that they were jailed for. These systems created new ways to discriminate, and further separation of the classes.