The Museum will virtually bring to your homes a selection of photographs coming from our archive. Every week you will discover new images.
Mug shots, Bertillonage (France) 1884-1896.
Unidentified photographer, gelatin silver prints, on carboard.
These photographs are examples of the criminal identification method created by French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon in the second half of the Eighteen Century. They present a front and a profile portrait of the subject taken right after the arrest and right before the release. This articulated identification system, called Bertillonage, included the use of photographs besides descriptive and anthropometric details of the detainee in one single identification sheet.
Between 1888 and 1905 many countries around the world adopted the Bertillonage method promoting the use of photography as one of the most powerful mediums of social control. From 1905 onwards it is substituted by the fingerprint identification system, introduced in Italy by Giovanni Gasti a partner of Salvatore Ottolenghi in the school of Scientific Police.