Leveillé. Louis. 37 ans, né le 7/7/57 à Cliche (Seine). Forgeron. Anarchiste. 7/7/94. 1894

Editor: This gelatin-silver print, taken in 1894 by Alphonse Bertillon, is titled "Leveillé, Louis. 37 ans...Anarchiste." It's quite a stark image; the man's direct gaze is a little unsettling. How do you interpret this work? Curator: Indeed. The subject's gaze is quite potent. Consider what is not overtly stated. Bertillon was standardizing mugshots, yes, but the emotional weight embedded in these seemingly neutral images is immense. Look at the way 'anarchiste' is added to the caption. This photograph transcends mere documentation; it's an archive of social anxiety. The crack in the photographic emulsion itself...do you think it's merely damage? Or could it be symbolic of fissures in the social order? Editor: That's a fascinating point about the crack! I hadn't considered that it could be intentional. The 'anarchiste' label definitely casts a shadow on the image. Was Bertillon trying to influence how viewers perceived Leveillé? Curator: Influence, document, control—Bertillon was at the crux of emerging visual technologies and state power. The anthropological impulse to classify *others* has a long, problematic history. Ask yourself, how do visual signifiers—the mustache, the direct gaze, even the rough clothing—become associated with specific social identities, especially those deemed threatening? What endures is the aura, if you will, of Leveillé, surviving the rigid grid of the Bertillon system. Editor: I see how the context charges the image with so much more meaning. It’s not just a picture of a man but a snapshot of a society wrestling with its own fears. Curator: Precisely. Visual culture perpetually negotiates and renegotiates the weight of historical anxieties, isn’t it so? It's in those negotiations that meaning continuously arises and re-arises.