The Mug Shot A Brief History

Photography has a long-standing relation to policing. Not long after its invention, in 1839, the technology began to be used for the twinned purposes of identification and surveillance. In Paris, the police deployed photography in efforts to pinpoint serial offenders, and also to instruct a broader population in methods of scrutiny. Police departments in the United States started photographing arrested men and women as early as the 1850s, and displayed their portraits for public viewing in rogues’ galleries. Early ambrotypes and tintypes captured suspects in a range of gray hues, encircled by ornamental brass frames; occasionally, their cheeks have been tinted pink. Later in the nineteenth century, as photographs became easy and inexpensive to reproduce as paper prints, the mug shot was used widely in police departments throughout Europe and the United States.

But the mug shot as we know it today did not, or speaking image. The involved nine physical measurements, including the breadth of the arm span, the diameter of the head, the length of the foot, and even the size of the ear. Bertillon’s system demonstrated that the photograph did not provide a transparent record, but required textual, discursive, and institutional support to make it legible. Called , this approach paradoxically heralded the mug shot while underscoring the insufficiency of photographic identification.