Simonin. Joseph. 26 ans, né à Saint-Maurice (Seine). Gainier. Anarchiste. 6/3/94. 1894

This is an albumen print of Simonin, a 26-year-old anarchist, made in France in 1894 by Alphonse Bertillon. Albumen prints were made using a painstaking photographic process, coating paper with egg white and silver nitrate, then exposing it to light through a negative. This image is part of Bertillon’s pioneering work in forensic science. He was interested in standardizing police mugshots as a tool of identification, part of the broader effort to control and classify individuals within the social order. The very act of carefully photographing Simonin, an admitted anarchist, and meticulously recording his personal details, reduces him to a set of data points. Here, the craft of photography is enlisted in the service of state power, transforming the individual into a specimen, frozen in time and classified in a system.