Vaury. Charles, Joseph. 43 (ou 44) ans, né le 31/3/59 à Sedan. Mécanicien. Anarchiste. 16/3/94. 1894

Curator: I find this piece intensely poignant. There’s such vulnerability captured, or perhaps exposed, in the simple act of documenting a human being by… a system. Editor: Indeed. This albumen silver print from 1894 presents us with “Vaury. Charles, Joseph.” according to the handwritten note below his image, around 43 years of age, a mechanic and—remarkably, as the card notes—an anarchist. The photograph comes from the lens of Alphonse Bertillon. Curator: An anarchist, yes! Looking at his eyes, the set of his jaw… there’s a spark, a refusal to be contained that just leaps off the card despite the dreary presentation. Or perhaps *because* of it. Editor: Bertillon's portraits, born from the rise of criminal profiling, aimed to standardize identification. Each mugshot is a product of precise measurement and categorization. We are meant to see him primarily through the grid of state power. Curator: Exactly. And what that framework misses—intentionally so, perhaps—is a glimpse of the rebellious spirit blazing in him. The softness around his mouth betrays perhaps an unwillingness, an unease even as he embraces the label and whatever consequences come with it. Does he find it tragic, funny, unavoidable? One wonders. Editor: We are invited, perhaps forced, to consider how identity gets shaped under specific conditions, highlighting tensions between individuality, social context and the role that materials and documentation processes play. His clothes appear worn, humble; an attire reflective of laboring-class conditions ripe with socio-economic friction. Curator: Ultimately, I’m left pondering the tension. We, seeing this long after Charles Joseph is gone, get to imagine—perhaps project—into this frozen moment, while Bertillon just aimed to file him away as an immutable number in the archives. Irony, history—heavy stuff. Editor: The materiality here amplifies that sense of tension for me; the fragile photograph capturing a life defiant yet constrained by the technologies used to capture it, reminding me how our reading of "high art" shifts when examining its production methods as extensions of historical record and labor.