Photography and the Other
When photography first became a common phenomenon in the 1800’s, people viewed it critically compared to the art form of painting. This was a result of photography being a visual medium that was an accurate portrayal of the real world as well as it’s relatively simple and straightforward photographic production processes compared to painting. Before photography, painting and drawing was the only tool that could be used for portraiture. As a result of its difficulty and long production process, it was reserved for the bourgeois. Not long after photography began to become more prominent in society, it became clear that photography could be used for scientific purposes such as record keeping and object analysis, which quickly opened up the possibility for photography’s use for portraiture of those not in the highest socioeconomic classes as well as its use for criminal photography and scientific needs. At this point in history, there was an inherent need for a technology that was capable of capturing real world images quickly and efficiently because of the difficulty and time needed in order to use other mediums of imagery, like painting.
According to Mirriam Webster, social pathology is “a study of social problems (such as crime or alcoholism) that views them as diseased conditions of the social organism.” [1] Social pathology was largely popular in the scientific community in the 19th century as a result of the emergence of photography. Photography was considered to be a useful analytical tool, form of record keeping and a medium for distribution of imagery and information to the public. In “The Body and the Archive,” Allan Sekula analyses the ways in which photography was able 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.” [2]
The nature of photography as being a life-accurate tool for imagery led to photography being used to capture, distribute, and provide subtle commentary on photos of individuals that were often considered to be abnormal, criminal, or “other.” In “The Body and the Archive,” Sekula highlights photography’s role in criminal photography and in social pathology studies. For the first time in history, policer’s and scientists began to photograph individuals in an anthropological and analytical way, hoping to draw conclusions about any commonalities between the appearance, bone structure, or facial structure that could help identify and generalize a person as a criminal, a person with a mental illness, or more.
In the 1800’s, photographs had an element of certainty to their existence and their use in society. Individuals would see photographs as a purely accurate representation of objects or people in the world because that is what photography was considered to be. There was little consideration of the production, the purpose, or any agenda’s that may be related to a photograph being in circulation. Because of this, there was a large amount of power that was held by a photographer and whoever distributed these photographs to the public.
Every individual can be viewed paradoxically as different, while also being the same one species, there are different social institutions and phenomena that are able to shift the way people will tend to view other individuals. Within everybody’s mind, they are themselves, never “the Other”. The Other is a concept of differentiation and uniqueness from one’s own self. When one person views another person as “the Other”, it is likely that they have separated themselves from the other individual in terms of their similarities and they have focused more heavily on their differences.
One example of this is the photograph and the repeated use of African American’s in “freak shows'' in the 1800’s. In the image, there are two albino African American brothers who were used as a side show at fairs and circus’ because of their highly rare genetic condition. These two brother’s were both equally as human as any African American or European American that was around at the time, but because of their through their presentation to the public, they were seen as the Other. As a result of the context of the photograph, the viewer’s thoughts tend to be influenced to believe that they are inherently different from the individual that they are looking at. In reality, there is nothing separating these two brothers from the popular self that was typically viewing the circus aside from the pigmentation and their melanin. When considering the circumstances, they were thought to be different because they were meant to be shown and displayed as different. With this context, there is less ability for viewers to have freedom of choice when forming an idea about a person or an object. [3] The one who holds power is able to control this freedom of choice.
Turner refers to Positivism as the belief that “the social sciences, and sociology in particular, are natural sciences in which abstract laws of human organization can be formulated to explain the operative dynamics of the social universe. The plausibility of these laws are [sic] then to be assessed against systematically collected empirical data.” [4] When positivism is attributed to criminology, it often looks at criminal behavior as a tendency that is a direct result from factors involved with the subject that forces criminal behavior. [5]
Photography quickly became a tool for Victorian scientists to study positivism because of the fact that photographs were perceived as factual portrayals of the real world. Governments and criminologists began to use mugshots as a standard tool that could be used to analyze and document any findings and generate conclusions about what physical and visual attributes can positively identify a criminal from a law abiding citizen. [6] Before photography, criminologists would have to rely on drawings or paintings of criminals in order to study criminals. The problem was that these visual mediums weren’t standardized and there was room for artist error that could skew any findings. With a completely standardized data collection tool like the photograph, criminologists and scientists felt that they were now able to use photography to help draw conclusions about their work.
An issue arises where photography can, in fact, be altered in a variety of ways. First, the set of a photograph can be meticulously arranged so that the image taken can be different than something may in fact appear in real life. Second, a photo can be edited after an image has been taken. Photograph editing is far easier and advanced today than it was in the 1800’s, but it can be shown in photographs as early as daguerreotypes. After a photograph had been taken, it was not uncommon for the photographer to color or alter an image to appear more beautifully. In either case, this would be an instance of invalid data that could have been used in order to draw conclusions that were not valid.
Alphonse Bertillion was a French police officer and anthropologist who is famous for his photographic documentation of crime scenes that bear similarities to the photographs that we see of crime scenes throughout history. Alphonse Bertillion was also the inventor of the mugshot, which has become the standard for criminal identification since its creation. [7] The two photographic forms that he created completely changed the way that criminals were able to be identified, categorized, and displayed to the public.
Francis Galton is famous for his work surrounding the eugenics movement that sought to identify and maintain a type of human that had optimal genetics compared to others. In his work, he would combine photographs in order to make composite images of several individuals in order to show how the average criminal, businessman, or other would appear as. By stacking photos of faces on top of each other, Galton believed that he would be able to find a positive indicator of traits such as intelligence, strength, beauty, or other characteristics. Galton’s work as a eugenicist went on to create centuries of global hardship revolving around a positivist idea of what traits are attributed to the “perfect human.”
The projects of Bertillon and Galton constitute two methodological poles of the positivist attempts to define and regulate social deviance. Bertillon and Galton both used scientific photography to reinforce their work to be able to display their findings in an anthropological and scientific way. While Bertillon used anthropometric photography for the collection of criminal records and Galton used composite photography to push the agenda of the eugenics movement, the two were both positivists that were looking at ways to define and regulate social deviance through a method that was flawed as a result of the power systems of the world.
Photographic capabilities played a component in these movements because painting would never have been used as a replacement unless there was an event that was historically monumental. Photography was an efficient method of recording and drawing quick conclusions and being able to spread an agenda to people who could view the photos. “One danger lies in constructing an overly monolithic or unitary model of nineteenth century realist discourse. Within the rather limited and usually ignored field of instrumental scientific and technical realism, we discover a house divided.” [8] Whoever holds the power in society will be able to utilise these types of photographs in order to push a set agenda. For example, if a police chief in a predominantly white anglo-saxon protestant location is looking to advance their standing in society compared to the rest, they may be easily influenced to only collect, release, and display the mugshot images that confirm their agenda and divert any negative attention away from people of their own background.
When using photography to surveil and control people, it becomes apparent that there is no true way to eliminate bias or the possibility for the images to be altered before or after the photograph was taken. When looking at a page of mugshots, there is always a possibility of their being a single or multiple people that may have been left out, or arranged in an inconspicuous way that could change the way a viewer sees a situation. Now more than ever do people need to be aware of the photographs that they are seeing. Behind any social institution, there could be a variety of biases present that can affect the way that information is understood and accepted by the public. Although photography is seen as an accurate representation of the real world, over drawings or paintings, there is always a possibility for there to be a hidden agenda in the work that is meant to persuade.