ANTHROPOMETRY & MUG SHOTS | ALPHONSE BERTILLON

This is adendum to my series on crime scene and forensic photography. French photographer Alphonse Bertillon is credited as the father of the mug shot. He focused on measuring and photographing physical characteristics of criminals in France at the time allowing the police departments to identify repeating offenders. It should be acknowledged that he also had a parralel interest in biometry in the interest of eugenics and racial profiling; but some of his contributions to the relationship between photography and criminology are still used today.

CRIME: AMSTERDAM

CRIME SCENE AMSTERDAM
There is a recent trend of combing city crime-photo archives and a great example is this book called Crime Scene Amsterdam. The odd thing is that these look like they could be touchy-feely art school photographs from the last decade or William Eggleston knock-offs. Here are a few samples (via www.archibaldkobayashi.com). 

CRIME: RANDOLPHE A. REISS

There was an interesting show last year at the Elysée Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland of archival crime scene photographs called "The Scene of the Crime: Rodolphe A. Reiss (1875–1929)." In 1909 Reiss founded the first academic forensic science program the "Institut de Police Scientifique" (Institute of Forensic Science) at the University of Lausanne. Reiss was a bit of a Sherlock Holmes character - a multitalented, curious man; a chemist, a publicist, a professor, a criminologist and a forensic scientist. An interesting photographic side note is that he was commissioned by the Serbian government to carry out an inquiry into atrocities committed by Hungary, Germany and Bulgaria during World War I. As a result of the inquiry he found photographic evidence in the form of propaganda postcards showing the Austrian-Hungarian Army committing atrocities against Serbs. 

There's some interesting rabble-rousing on the part of the forensic science blog about the show: "...as forensic scientists who regularly use photographs to document crime scenes, autopsy findings and bone trauma to name a few, we are shocked at the use of post-mortem photographs for entertainment." They make an a sharp distinction between forensic and memorial or post-mortem photography. "The practice of photographing death as any other social event like weddings, baptisms and birthdays was very popular. Photographing the recently deceased is also known as Memorial Photography or Postmortem Photography and was a common practice in the nineteenth century."

CRIME: WEEGEE

Arthur Fellig AKA Weegee is generally (if not entirely accurately) considered the father of crime-scene photography and the 'police beat.' He pioneered new developments in flash and low-light photography and 'exposed' the nocturnal life in New York to the public eye for the first time. It is interesting to think that photographic coverage would be dictated by technological limitations, but prior to him news photographs were more-often-than-not taken in high light situations, outdoors, on stage or with cumbersome and dangerous magnesium flashes.
Weegee had a police radio in his car and in some cases he was known for beating the officers to the scene of the crime. He would develop his film on-site in the trunk of his car. His workflow anticipated the lifestyle of any stringer or wire photographer decades later. The history of his work is also interesting because it is a classic example of 'practical' photography and its recuperation into the art/art history discourse. There is also a nifty NYT slideshow about him here.

“Gunman Killed by Off-Duty Cop at 344 Broome Street”

“Weegee at a Murder” (1942)