Tournan. Pierre. 49 ans, né à Bouzouville (Moselle). Fabricant de couronnes. Anarchiste. 6/3/94. 1894

This photograph was made in 1894 by Alphonse Bertillon, using the wet collodion process on albumen paper. Photography at this time had become integral to modern systems of surveillance. Consider the materiality of this image. We see a standard headshot, a mugshot, capturing Tournan, a 49-year-old wreath maker and anarchist. The tonal range enabled by the photographic process renders the details of his face. Yet, it also captures the banality of state control. This image, one of many taken by Bertillon, forms part of a new bureaucratic system of identification and documentation. The making of such images was routine. What is interesting here is the social context in which this image was produced. Bertillon was not an artist but a police officer. His practice was not artistic, but a form of documentation. The act of photographing and recording Tournan strips him of his identity, reducing him to a set of quantifiable data. This photograph exposes the politics of labor and class in late 19th-century France, where state power and photographic technology were used to monitor and control the working class.