In Allan Sekula’s The Body and the Archive, he discusses many topics regarding photography and its history of marginalization. Through these topics, he brings to light the oppressive nature of these early photographic techniques in relation to science and social issues. This essay will discuss the creation of “otherness” through photography, the relationship between science and photography through the analysis of Alphonse Bertillon and Francis Galton’s work, as well as relating these issues to modern photography in order to support Allan Sekula’s argument that photography is a “double system: a system of representation capable of functioning both honorifically and repressively”[1].
            “Otherness” was created by humans, more specifically white, upper-class people, in order to exercise power and maintain an unfair and indecent structure. Its main goal was framed to create groupings of people to create data for different races, classes, and types of people showing their similarities. However, what it highlighted was the differences of every race from the standard white person, the differences of lower class from the upper class, those with mental or physical disabilities from those without mental or physical disabilities, and many other arbitrary differences. It was essentially a source of exclusion for much of the population. The agenda was to create “others” or identify people who did not fit into the category of what was classified as the ideal or the standard. A social hierarchy was created, therefore, systematizing not only photography but culture as well.
            With the development of photography in the early 1800s, there came a sense of wonder and excitement with things like seeing yourself on your very own carte de visite. It was promoted as a sort of “cultural enlightenment”. Photography proved useful for keeping track of notes or even sharing memories with loved ones. However, a dark undertone lurked beneath the surface of photographers’ purposes and intentions. As mentioned previously, the “other” became solidified through photographic means. Sekula states “... 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”[2]. This began when early documentary photographers decided to take images of people they deemed from foreign or non-Western, creating racial stereotypes through “ethnography”. These people were either disrobed and photographed nude or partially nude from all angles. Looking at the images, one can see the intention of the images is to portray the subject as a specimen rather than a human. They become apart of an experiment, per say. A loud silence rings through these documentary images, leaving the subjects to be inspected and picked apart. These photographs were widely produced being sent into the homes of white people, inherently teaching them that non-Westerners should be viewed as savage, different, and less than.
For example, John Lamprey’s Front and Profile Views of a Malayan Male (1868-1869) exemplifies this claim that photographers utilized subjects of differing backgrounds and portrayed them using inhumane methods. To start, the man is fully stripped to the nude and stands upon a pedestal, as if he was a piece in a museum on display. He is photographed in the same way that an object or animal would be: an image from the front and an image from the side. He carries a spiked weapon of sorts subconsciously making the viewers see him as dangerous, violent, or savage. It may not have even been his choice whether or not he carried the item. The grid pattern in the background of the photo signifies a sort of connection to science or math, which was the basis of “othering”.    
Another form of “othering” was established with diagnosing mental instability or “insanity”, which was prominent among women. As with the photographic techniques when photographing non-Westerners, mentally unstable patients were grouped and photographed. There was said to be a certain quality that these people shared, that it could be told by just looking at a person once. These images were printed in medical texts as references for psychiatric evaluation. Mark Jackson relays that the “use of photographs by medical writers as evidence of mental deficiency in this way was dependent on a belief, prevalent from the mid-nineteenth century, that photographs constituted a direct transcription of reality, that is, they provided ‘a perfect and faithful record of the subject’”[3]. Clearly with proper inspection and comparison between many of these images, anyone could see that there were elements in play that photographers used to their advantage. Certain poses or facial expressions were coaxed out of subjects to create the mentally ill persona. At this time it was believed that images were the most truthful representation of a subject, so many of these people were falsely diagnosed with insanity, many of which were women.      
Photography and its influence on science was powerful, especially with the positivist mindset that many scientists possessed during the Victorian era. Positivism can be defined “as the philosophical approach during the 19th century that proposed the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge and that all things are ultimately measurable”[4]. The philosophy is based on the assumption that all things are solvable through science. This quickly led to the ideas of phrenology and physiognomy. Phrenology is the study of the shape and physical features of the skull and head that is based on the belief that these features can determine character and personality traits. Physiognomy is the study of facial characteristics based on the belief that these features can determine character and personality traits. These two belief systems were used to predispose certain individuals to discrimination and injustice. These false accusations of a “scientific process” were taken as truth by much of the public, as they were uneducated and believed in the truth behind the photograph. Phrenology and Physiognomy were both utilized to scientifically prove that there was a difference in those with certain physical attributes. These attributes were then employed in criminal research, identifying those with particular facial features as dangerous or lawless. Today, these theories and practices are discounted, but during the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, these sciences were followed religiously, especially by those in power.
Documentary photographers were thought of like observers, people who simply snapped an image of a scene or person that they saw. This idea circulated in the minds of the public and seemed to convince people of the true nature of photographic images. Photography became like a universal language. It promised more than a wealth of detail; it promised to reduce nature to its geometrical essence”[5] The combination of light and the result of the image are a cause for truthfulness. Phrenology and physiognomy were linked with this form of validity. This becomes a cause for concern as certain physical attributes are identified as criminal, due to the increased number of recorded arrests of certain races, most of the time being black or hispanic men.   
The pioneers in criminal photography were police officers, Alphonse Bertillon and Francis Galton. Bertillon is stated as the creator of the mug shot, a photograph utilized to identify the criminal and their corresponding crime. The mug shot was a standardized system of taking an image of a person front on and then from the side view. Although both Bertillon and Galton utilize photography in their reports, Sekula states that “Bertillon and Galton constitute two methodological poles of the positivist attempts to define and regulate social deviance”[6]. Alphonse Bertillon utilized anthropometric photos while Galton utilized composite portraits.
The father of criminal anthropometry, Alphonse Bertillon, decided to make use of photographic techniques by created a system of photographing and measuring certain facial features for identification purposes[7]. Previous to Bertillon’s system, police would only have a vague description of the offender, without any real evidence. The goal was to be able to recognize certain characteristics of criminals.   Backed by phrenology and physiognomy, police would be able to make assumptions about the arrested individuals based on measurements and identify them as previous offenders. It proved to be a useful, however taxing system in the late 19th century. On the photo card there would be an image of the subject from the front and from the side along with a series of measurements and descriptions of shape including the ears, the forehead, the teeth, and the nose, which was even broken down into several categories.   Although the system helped to regulate crime, the main effort was, as Sekula relays, “to regulate the growing urban presence of the "dangerous classes," of a chronically unemployed sub-proletariat”[8]. The beginning of a system of unfair marginalization that would target race and class began with the invention of Bertillon’s criminal anthropometry. Police would become biased to think that black men should be watched and questioned even if they were walking with their family in the street. Galton’s ideas about race and eugenics corresponded with Bertillon’s invention and brought up another series of issues.
Francis Galton’s focus was in eugenics, which essentially had the goal of the betterment of physical traits for humans through breeding. His research centered around taking multiple images of people of certain groups whether it be by race, gender, class, or even by job. From there Galton would create composite images where he combined all of the photographs of a particular group to create the perfect type. As Sekula puts it, “Galton sought to construct a program of social betterment through breeding. This program pivoted on a profoundly ideological biologization of existing class relations in England. Eugenicists justified their program in utilitarian terms: by seeking to reduce the numbers of the "unfit" they claimed to be reducing the numbers of those predestined to unhappiness”[9] He essentially wanted to wipe out anyone who was of difference from the ideal, which can be inferred as the white upper class. As a precursor to World War II, it is evident that white supremacy was what Western systems were built on. In criminology, this was used, as was Bertillon’s system, to identify people as criminals before they even commited a crime. If they looked similar to criminals who had been convicted in the past, then they could be identified as such.   There are many ideas that are problematic about Galton’s research and practices. The first being that there should be no such thing as the ideal or perfect human. It instilled and encouraged discrimination based on physical features. Another problem comes from the idea of assumptions based on false science. Phrenology and physiognomy were both a product of the positivist approach of the nineteenth century. However, both faded after they were proved to be faulty. Galton and Bertillon’s efforts to systematize the police system helped in the actual identification of criminals, but provided a space for prejudice and bias.
Modern photography has advanced by iotas, but we still see the same type of issues that were present in early photographic methods. The entire Western culture is built upon a system that encourages racist, classist, and sexist tendencies. With the creation of social media and the accessibility of photography through camera phones, the bombardment of images is an everyday occurrence for most. The trustworthiness of pictures still remains a problem with photo editing apps and softwares that can create a false reality. Things like fake news or even edits of women’s bodies that are catered towards young girls circulate throughout the internet, causing people to believe that these photos are real, based on the early idea that a photograph equals truth. Personally, I don’t think that this is an issue that we will ever be able to solve with the quickly advancing technology. Photographic imaging will always be present whether that be sharing family photos online or a mugshot. As a society we are controlled by visual stimulation and photography provided the perfect backdrop for propaganda and experimentation.


[1] Allan Sekula, The Body and the Archive (Cambridge, Massachusets: MIT Press, 1986), 5 https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/778312.pdf .

[2] Sekula, The Body and the Archive, 7.

[3] Mark Jackson, Images of Deviance: Visual Representations of Mental Defectives in Early Twentieth-Century Medical Texts (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1.

[4] J. H. Turner, Positivism: Sociological via International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Elsevier, 2020) 11827, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767019410https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B0080430767019410 .

[5] Sekula, The Body and the Archive, 17

[6] Sekula, The Body and the Archive, 19

[7] Pierre Piazza, Alphonse Bertillon and the Identification of Persons (1880-1914) (Criminocorpus, 2016)


[8] Sekula, The Body and the Archive, 5

[9] Sekula, The Body and the Archive, 42-44