Bellon. Joseph, Alexandre. 54 ans, né à Granville (Meuse) le 19/6/39. Journalier. Anarchiste. 17/3/94. 1894

This mugshot of Joseph Alexandre Bellon was created by Alphonse Bertillon, the father of modern criminal identification, in Paris in 1894. Bertillon developed a system of anthropometric photography that captured the faces and bodies of alleged criminals, like Bellon, in a standardized way, ostensibly for identification purposes. Bellon’s face and body are presented to us as evidence, but evidence of what? The inscription tells us that Bellon was 54 years old, worked as a day laborer, and was an anarchist. In fin-de-siècle Paris, anarchists were figures of fear, associated with bombings and assassinations. But what did it mean to be an anarchist? Bellon’s class status as a laborer is crucial here; anarchism was, in part, a revolt against the conditions of industrial capitalism. Looking at Bellon, I wonder about his life, his beliefs, and his fears. We know so little about him, but this photograph stands as a stark reminder of how systems of power can reduce an individual to a set of measurements and a label, obscuring the complex humanity beneath.