The Forensic Eye and the Public Mind: The Bertillon System of Crime Scene Photography

Abstract

In fin de siècle France, Alphonse Bertillon—best known for his widely adopted system of criminal identification—pursued “other applications” for judicial photography, suggesting that photography might be used to procure “an exact, complete, and impartial” view of “locales, things, and beings.” Photography, Bertillon was suggesting, could preserve a crime scene. In many ways, crime scene photography seems like the logical fulfillment of what Allan Sekula termed the “evidentiary promise” of photography. Understanding crime scene photography as a form of evidence places it in the realm of empirical science, with the photograph preserving proof of misdeeds and aiding the detective's forensic pursuit of truth. But, perhaps surprisingly, this was not the use that Bertillon foresaw for crime scene photography. Instead he suggested that crime scene photography was destined for the courtroom, and for the eyes of the jury. There it would not be a vehicle of objective proof, but rather an emotional catalyst for conviction. This paper examines the Bertillon system of crime scene photography as a rhetorical strategy calibrated for emotional impact, showing how it attempted to move viewers from the space of investigation and uncertainty to the space of conviction.