Allen Sekula’s The Body and the Archive makes the argument that “photography came to establish and delimit the terrain of the other, to define both the generalized look-the typology-and the contingent instance of deviance and social pathology.”[1] In his writing, he explains the impact photography had on revolutionizing social deviance and the ways in which it was conducted. Photography, since its creation, has served as a powerful tool that holds more power than an objective image and these photographs can fuel classist and racist ideologies so prevalent in society.
            Since photography began to increase in popularity, the concept of The Other began to appear quickly in a variety of ways. The Other is a concept that alienates and dehumanizes individuals based upon an endless array of characteristics that make them different from the general public. It negatively portrays minority groups and most often pushes the status of the dominant group higher. Othering is a dangerous and harmful mindset that has stemmed far back into the realm of photography, especially when diagnosing illnesses and mental instability. Victorians began to believe in the accuracy and truthfulness of the photograph when they realized it’s legal power. It was an indexical inventory, as opposed to a textual inventory. This ability to document a potential criminal act and shut down all of the possible alibi’s gave people the hope that they could trust in the accuracy of photographs, as it held scientific weight.[2]
            “For nineteenth-century positivists, photography doubly fulfilled the Enlightenment dream of a universal language: the universal mimetic language of the camera yielded up a higher, more cerebral truth, a truth that could be uttered in the universal abstract language of mathematics.”[3]  In simpler terms, photography allowed for language to be as universal as mathematics. They could take one photograph, and its scientific uses could help define and explain scientific research without any actual words. However, this is simply impossible because photography itself cannot live as a dictionary, as every photograph is entirely unique and subject to its environment. This ties in with the concept of The Other and how images can be posed and tweaked in order to display an entirely different meaning that can push a subconscious narrative to change the viewer’s perspective.
            Even when an image was meant to be purely scientific, such as the classic mugshot, this type of image holds power and a stigma that turns it into an incredibly biased photograph. These so-called artless photographs turn into art, and hold much more power than originally perceived. And this is where it becomes difficult, as its fundamental to acknowledge these two ways to analyze scientific photographs. The “realist” approach attempts to make photos devoid of narrative and merely serve as photographic evidence in the eyes of science. On the other hand, there is the more “nominal” approach, which denies this and claims that there cannot be these simply generic categories of photographs[4].  
              Sekula argued that “The projects of Bertillon and Galton constitute two methodological poles of the positivist attempts to define and regulate social deviance.”[5] Before the distinction between the two can be discussed why prior attempts are criminal identification was not successful and what they sought to do instead. Through this lens, the poles of both Bertillon’s and Galton’s methodologies begin to become more apparent and show the ways in which they attempted to successfully define and regulate social deviance.
            Criminal identification had many inherent issues and problems that arose when trying to be as scientifically accurate as possible. One of the most challenging issues was the fact that the archive of images of individuals had grown too fast that they lost weight and it was impossible to distinguish an individual that had used a false name to remain hidden. Even in cases when the individual should be easy to identify, the search for the image could take weeks and brought great fatigue those tasked with finding this particular criminal. This gave birth to the need for a method of elimination to make the process faster. This can be reflected with the concept of Botany and Zoology in which they could distinguish and categorize by one element or another.[6]
            In order to help classify, Bertillon used calculus and mathematics to distinguish people with 11 body parts that would make it nearly impossible for two individuals to share the exact same measurements. Bertillon then photographed the criminal with two photos with one facing forward and one of their side profile. This has carried into the 21st century and is still the way in which governments take mugshots of those who are arrested.[7] He then could use Quetelet’s “average man” to categorize individuals based on these characteristics to more quickly and accurately identify individuals. As he was trying to make these mugshots and photos as absolutely neutral as possible, he insisted on certain things such as a standard focal length, consistent lighting, and fixed distance from the individual. His photographs were aiming to be as crisp, precise, and devoid of uniqueness. Bertillon’s attempt at photographing criminals was that of an advanced categorization of standardized procedures to increase the efficiency and accuracy of identification[8].
Galton, on the other hand, took a very different approach to the same issue of regulating social deviance. “Where Bertillon was a compulsive systematizer, Galton was a compulsive quantifier. While Bertillon was concerned primarily with the triumph of social order over social disorder, Galton was concerned primarily with the triumph of established rank over the forces of social leveling and decline.”[9]         Galton’s composite images were incredibly popular in the decades after 1877 when he had first proposed them. His earlier work proved to be incredibly racist and problematic as he used Eugenics and grouped intelligence depending on the race, with white European men being at the top of the list. It underestimated and quite literally attacked those of other races claiming their intelligence could only be compared to the white man and was always grades lower.[10] His process was full of fractional exposures, that pushed distinctive features into the shadows, and he claimed that it brought out the legitimate averages, and they could use these averages to infer more about larger populations based on appearance. This resulated in very soft and “dreamy” looking photographs that lacked sharp lines and only provided a generalization. From these common features depicted in the photographs, Galton truly believed that this would allow any individual to access and view these generalizations to make future claims about other individuals.[11]
            Where Bertillon categorized specific individuals to a great extent, Galton tried averaging the human face and turning the human face into a bell curve.[12] He claimed he could find the averages and show the differences in distinct racial types and that could be used a means of categorization in social deviance. Today, we see this as incredibly problematic and racist, but his ideas were widespread during this time and many people believed in his claims. He tried to simplify groups of people into one single image that could be used to identify people and was widely accepted until 1915.[13] Heavily rooted in eugenics, this racist and classist approach to categorizing and averaging the human face into a Galtonian composite survived for quite a long period.
            All of this relates heavily to the practice of photography to control and surveil people in today’s society. There are a multitude of issues of relying on photography to monitor citizens that need to be discussed. One of the largest issues is just the massive array of individuals there are to distinguish from. In heavily populated areas, there can be millions of people within a small radius and can make it extremely to pinpoint a specific individual. Additionally, this becomes more difficult when people are wearing accessories that make it more difficult to identify such as hats, sunglasses, and masks. This issue doesn’t even account for other subtle changes such as contoured makeup that may change how someone is photographed, plastic surgery, drastic hairstyle changes, weight gain or loss, etc.
            Racist and classist biases are also bound to affect the way in which control and surveillance is done in the current age. This is seen in just about every scenario, with lower-income areas being struck with more surveillance, and wealthy, white individuals get away with major crimes because of their position in society. Surveillance and other means of photography to control the population still heavily benefit the wealthy and white individuals and this has a snowball effect in creating nasty stereotypes of marginalized communities.
            Beyond the ever changing appearance of an individual, there is no universal way of identifying someone and people still succeed in fleeing countries and remaining under the radar in a different country. With greater technology, people can drastically change their appearance of an individual. This challenges the idea of what it means to have an objective image of an individual because their subjective choices in appearance change the image which can make it inherently unobjective. Every country uses surveillance differently and does not have accurate records of the identities of people in other countries. This makes it difficult to have a standard way to surveil and control people as there are millions of variables that can affect the way in which photographs can be used scientifically.
            The limitations of technology also bring unavoidable problems in the use of photography. This can be seen in security cameras and other video surveillance systems. With constant filming in case something occurs, there is so much data to process and makes it impossible to have high-resolution images of incidents when they do occur. This leads to individuals become just blobs and nearly unrecognizable and can make the use of photography obsolete in some cases. Technology can also only have so many cameras and photographs in so many locations that it is impossible to have a standard image in surveying the population. Society has become very aware of what an image from a security camera looks like and we associate those images with crimes even if they objectively weren’t intended to be. Beyond that, Objects and other people can block said cameras and make it difficult to accurately identify and pinpoint an individual. Another issue is the possibility of falsely identifying someone from an image. A blurry photo or an off-guard picture can greatly alter the way an individual appears and with a population so massive it is entirely possible to confuse certain individuals, especially in countries with a very homogenous population.
            Overall, Sekula’s The Body and The Archive dives deep into the issues of photography’s place in defining and regulating social deviance in society, and how people like Bertillon and Galton went about the same issues in very different ways. The concept of The Other played a strong role in unfairly alienating groups of individuals and it pushed its way into photographic development. Positivism’s influence pushed the narrative that the only type of valuable knowledge was scientific knowledge and that anything else was counterproductive to exploration. And then with Bertillon and Galton, positivist influence is apparent in trying to quantify and create mathematical solutions for the complexity of humanity and the regulation of social deviance. They went about these issues in very opposing ways but were striving towards the same goal of using photography as a scientific product. The issues they ran into when trying to control and surveil the population still play a major role today with racist, classist, and technical limitations that make it incredibly difficult to conduct ethically and effectively.