In "The Body and the Archive," written by Allan Sekula, he argues 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] . Photography made portraiture more accessible to those less wealthy, as having your portrait painted was for the bourgeoisie. The photographs made it less possible to embellish what one looks like and the items in the background. Photographs are more realistic and were used near the start for criminal identification. The use of photography in the mid-1800s to inform criminology is both complicated and fascinating, as is the journey this art form has taken since then.

The idea of “the other” is that they were using photography to argue that there were organically predetermined characteristics, and they wanted to argue for the possibility that through therapy, they could modify or enhance these organically predetermined characteristics. Marmaduke Sampson and Eliza Farnham argued this. The person taking photos of prisoners to help argue this was Mathew Brady. It is amusing that the photographer, Brady, supplied all the photographs of these criminals because he devoted almost the entire rest of his career to creating an archive of photographs of “illustrious” celebrated American figures. When they are referring to “the other,” they are talking about the people that need to have healthier mental health. In this case, the criminal is the other, and this is an example of “moral insanity.” The first-person is a law-abiding person, and “the other” is the threatening criminal body and has aggressive impulses unchecked. The idea of representing the body’s images led to tons of photographs being ordered, leading photography to be in high demand.

People ask, “What is phrenology?” The answer is that it is the study of the conformation of the skull as symptomatic of mental faculties and traits of character. Phrenology was a big part of taking these photographs of “the other.” “Phrenology, which emerged in the first decade of the nineteenth century in the researches of the Viennese physician Franz Josef Gall, sought to discern correspondences between the topography of the skull and what were thought to be specific localized mental faculties seated within the brain”.[2]

There is evidence of the significant influence of Positivism in early scientific uses of the photograph and other records of human physiognomy, also known as facial features or expressions. 19th-century Positivism was “a philosophical theory that states that "genuine" knowledge is exclusively derived from experience of natural phenomena and their properties and relations”.[3] The problem was that everything couldn’t be photographed, so photographs needed to be understood as only part of the picture or part of the learning. “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 mathematic”.[4] This is all about finding known criminals and being able to identify features in the skull.

There are many traits of the photograph that led Victorian scientists to trust in the accuracy and truthfulness of photographic images. One specific trait is that the photographs revealed scientific information—an important person who used this trait that Adolph Quetelet. Quetelet “focused on skeletal proportions of the body and upon volume and configuration of the head”.[5] He is known to be one of the most significant early architects of sociology. He was known for his anthropometrical researches. Another example is with some of Alphonse Bertillon’s work, “Bertillon insisted on a standard focal length, even and consistent lighting, and a fixed distance between the camera and the unwilling sitter. The profile view served to cancel the contingency of expression; the contour of the head remained consistent with time. The frontal view provided a face that was more likely to be recognizable within the other, less systematized departments of police work”.[6]

Alphonse Bertillon and Francis Galton were two very well-known men. Not only were they known as a person, but their photography was highly noticed. And even though they produced different types of photographs, their familiarity was about the same. Bertillon created anthropometric photos, and Francis Galton created composite portraits.

Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914), born in Paris and  “is often cited as a pioneer in the arena of forensic science”.[7] As a Parisian police official, Bertillon was highly motivated to create an effective modern system of criminal identification. “First, he combined photographic portraiture anthropometric description and highly standardized and abbreviated notes on a single fiche, or a card. Second, he organized these cards within a comprehensive, statistically based filing system”.[8] Bertillon was very scientific and detail-oriented and was more focused on the individual rather than anything else. Bertillon sought to individuate or single out. He was practical in response to the demands of urban police work and the politics of the lower-class struggle. His criminal identification was used to isolate a class of repeat offenders/professional criminals permanently. Many people ignored him and his work.

Francis Galton (1822-1911), born in Birmingham, was an “English explorer, anthropologist, and eugenicist known for his pioneering studies of human intelligence”.[9] Galton also invented a method of composite portraiture. He was interested in heredity and racial “betterment,” he worked with others to see if they could find a biologically determined “criminal type.” Unlike Bertillon, Galton wanted to look into hereditarian laws. His research was used to prevent these predisposed criminals from reproducing by means of public policy; so those “fit” could spread and promote and discourage or prevent “unfit.” Rather than being ignored, he was an object of the history of science, though eccentric.

With all this history and information that is given and talked about, there are some interesting facts, in addition. For example, “Galton is significant in the history of science for developing the first statistical methods for studying heredity.” Interestingly, his work is clearly a “cousin” of his cousin Charles Darwin's evolutionary paradigm.  It is also linked to Gregor Mendel's work on the genetic ratio underlying inheritance.[10]

In "The Body and the Archive," written by Allan Sekula, the author also states that “The projects of Bertillon and Galton constitute two methodological poles of the positivist attempts to define and regulate social deviance”.[11] When reading “The Body and the Archive,” it becomes clear how the history of photography is very important today.



 

 

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