Villanneau. Henri, Fernand. 35 ans, né le 11/3/59 à Poitiers. Clerc de notaire. Anarchiste. 2/7/94. 1894

This mugshot of Henri, Fernand Villanneau, a 35-year-old anarchist, was made by Alphonse Bertillon in France in 1894. Bertillon was the father of modern crime photography, inventing the "portrait parlé," a method of identification based on precise measurements and standardized photography. In late 19th-century France, anxieties about social order fueled the rise of scientific criminology. Bertillon’s system aimed to categorize and control individuals deemed threats to the established order. Here, the stark, frontal pose and meticulous record-keeping transform Villanneau into a specimen, stripped of individuality and reduced to a set of quantifiable data. The work's existence within the archive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art points to the institutionalized and, perhaps, aestheticized nature of the policing gaze. To fully understand this image, we need to delve into the history of policing, photography, and the social anxieties of the Belle Époque. It reminds us that art is not made in a vacuum, but is always embedded in specific social and institutional contexts.