Guillemard. Isidore, François. 46 ans, né à St-Michel des Andaines (Orne). Menuisier. Anarchiste 28/2/94. 1894

Editor: Here we have a gelatin silver print from 1894 by Alphonse Bertillon titled "Guillemard. Isidore, François. 46 ans, né à St-Michel des Andaines (Orne). Menuisier. Anarchiste." It looks like a mugshot, doesn't it? Stark and quite sobering. What stands out to you in this piece? Curator: Immediately, I’m struck by the photograph's function as a tool of social control. The materials—the gelatin silver print—became instrumental in a system of surveillance, meticulously recording and categorizing individuals. This challenges our typical understanding of photography as art, doesn't it? Instead, it speaks to photography's industrial purpose, its role in documenting labor and, in this case, criminalizing a specific political identity, that of an anarchist. Editor: So, the focus isn't so much on Bertillon as an artist, but more on how the photograph was used as a product of its time, right? Curator: Precisely. Consider the labor involved: the photographer, the subject coerced into participation, and the darkroom technicians. It's all a cog in a machine aimed at producing knowledge about and controlling a segment of the population. And the annotations scrawled on the print, “Menuisier. Anarchiste”–highlight how identity itself becomes a material to be classified and consumed by the state. It exposes a power dynamic embedded in the very making of the image. How do you feel about that? Editor: It’s disturbing, really. I hadn’t thought about the materials and process in that light before. It's like the photograph itself is a weapon of the state. Curator: Exactly. It prompts us to question the traditional boundaries we place between art, craft, and industrial production. The photograph serves less as a window into an individual and more as evidence of an oppressive system at work. Editor: That's a very different perspective than I usually consider when looking at art. I’ll definitely remember to look for these elements moving forward. Thank you!