Police Pictures -- The Photograph as Evidence

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Police Pictures – The Photograph as Evidence

Even before the advent of photography as a method of crime scene investigation, criminals have been identified as foreigners who simultaneously attract and frighten people. In the past, people witnessed death and violence through public spectacles such as gladiatorial contests and public tortures. Now, through the mediation of photography, people experience violence and see the criminal in a profoundly mysterious way: “The crime photo gives us imaginative access to savagery; the mug shot becomes a mirror of what we fear may reside within us. Between chaos and reason lies the photograph” (Phillips 13). Photographs of crime scenes seemed to present a sacred portrayal of beauty.

Preceding studies of the psychological complexity of human behavior, most people believed that the innate nature of the criminal was formulated and manifested through physical appearances. This belief is clearly shown in Panorama of Man, the frontispiece of the book Heads and Faces and How to Study Them: A Manual of Phrenology and Physiognomy for the People (Phillips 13). In this illustrated spectrum of racial (red, brown, white, yellow, and black), gender, age, moral (pious, worldly-minded, and vicious), and mental (wise, ignorant, insane, and idiotic) differences, the “lower” orders appear menacing and animal-like. With the birth of terms such as “social Darwinism” and “survival of the fittest,” the Victorian social philosophy was gradually shaped: one assured himself of his place in the world by pointing to all he was not (Phillips 14).

In Essays of Physiognomy, Johann Kaspar Lavater’s assumption “of the Harmony between Moral Beauty and Physical Beauty” meant that every morally good person was attractive, while every morally bad person appeared to be morally bad (Phillips 15). Interested in Lavater’s physiognomical studies, Franz Joseph Gall formulated phrenology and believed that he could read a person’s personality through the exterior formations of the skull bone (Phillips 16). Charles Darwin also believed that one’s inner character could be read through facial expressions. Keeping these theories in mind, Cesare Lombroso developed his own theory; he saw innate criminal traits as “stigmata” and considered the criminal to be an example of biological atavism that had a lower evolutionary status: “The criminal [is] an atavistic being who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior animals” (Phillips 22). In contrast to Lombroso’s theory, Jacob Riis focused not on individual will but rather on the social circumstances that fostered criminal activity. These claims gradually developed into the study of criminal anthropology.

In The Criminal, Havelock Ellis provided a summary of criminal anthropology and asked the following questions: who is the criminal, what are his distinguishing characteristics, and how do we identify him. Ellis also claimed that “Aristotle… [recognized] the physiognomic signs of habits, vices, and crimes, including many signs that are in accordance with modern scientific observation, [and] observed a connection between the shape of the head and the mental disposition” (Ellis 27). Therefore, a new type of criminal documentation began with Alphonse Bertillon’s anatomical profiles, complete with detailed descriptions, measurements, and two photographs. As the number of criminals increased, these standard mug shots (also known as portrait parlés or “speaking likenesses”) and measurements became harder to catalog and retrieve. In addition, two men, both named Will West and with approximately the same measurements, were sent to the same prison in 1903. Bertillon’s system was therefore discredited.

Eventually, photography became the “triumph of modern science” that made it possible “to preserve permanent and unmistakable traces of a human being” (Thomas 111). Edgar Allan Poe also epitomized photography as “truth itself in the supremeness of perfection” and “a form of representation that superseded language in its ability to approximate reality and achieve a ‘perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented’” (Thomas 111). Photography replaced paintings and illustrations as a more accurate representation – a better imitation – of its referent. Since the camera was regarded as a machine of scientific rationality that captured every moment perfectly, photographs were seen as objective tools for discerning truth. Early applications of photography in criminal study included daguerreotype portraits of criminals (such as Matthew Brady’s photographs of the criminals of Blackwell Island’s prison) and “rogues’ galleries” (which comprised of cartes-de-visites).

Attempting to visualize criminal types, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Darwin, developed a type of composite photograph that “achieved a level of reality and truth superior to what its individual subjects could by revealing through the machine what the natural eye cannot see”; he demonstrated how individuals deviate from central “types” even though they are inherently similar (Thomas 126). This illustrates a “crucial paradox”: while there might be a “generalizable” criminal type with a certain set of bodily traits, deviant individuals can still be isolated from the type through their absolute unique identity. He observed that the features of the composites were much better looking compared to those of the components: “The special villainous irregularities in the latter have disappeared, and the common humanity that underlies them has prevailed. They represent, not the criminal, but the man who is liable to fall into crime” (Phillips 22). Galton was also an advocate of the human eugenics movement; he traced the aristocratic upper-class English to the “ideal” (albeit extinct) ancient Greek and expressed his fear about the demise of the white race.

Havelock Ellis had defined the criminal body as “an exotic, non-white, non-European, foreign body” (Thomas 210). Louis Agassiz, a “special creationist,” had also had a fascination with racial evaluation of African Americans, Asians, and Native Americans (Phillips 17). In Great Britain, due to the pursuit of new imperialism, the detection of criminal identity went hand-in-hand with the suppression of foreign nationalities. Criminal deviance became associated with issues of national security; as intellectuals romanticized “the foreigner” as belonging to a special class or race, violence in the cities was blamed on foreigners such as immigrants. This racial prejudice became the basis of Galton’s version of “great expectations”: he expected and attempted to distinguish racial elements in fingerprints.

As the public’s interest in crime heightened, subjects of death and violence seemed to be the preferred sources for the aesthetic expression of photography: “Photographs were a particularly powerful vehicle for creating vivid, larger-than-life characters that would arouse more interest – and sell more newspapers – than well-reasoned reporting ever could” (Squiers 42). For example, when a woman framed the death of John Dillinger (criminal with the highest-profile killing), his “manhood [was] ridiculed” and tremendous publicity was generated for J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from 1924 until 1972. Photographs of the dead Dillinger demonstrated the authority of law enforcers and created the illusion of social stability and justice (Squiers 48).

Since detectives and photography were both “fashionable novelties of the 1840s and 1850s,” metaphorical connections between literary detectives and actual photographs surfaced: “The detective’s eye functions like a camera, taking in everything and leaving upon his mind something akin to a photographic image” (Haworth-Booth 39). For example, as “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has ever seen,” Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes often gazes through the lens of a magnifying class, presenting himself as a camera-like instrument of inspection. By using logic, rationality, and intuition, he successfully reads the criminal bodies (“books that do not permit itself to be read”) and determine the identity of the criminal (Thomas 204). Through these literary detectives, the transition of forensics from an objective science into a subjective art is demonstrated.

Although photographs were perceived to be impartial, interpretation is now known to be highly subjective, based entirely on one’s personal, socio-economic, and cultural experiences. From Galton’s attempted criminal-typing to theories of the “criminal chromosome,” scientific theories about criminal deviance have always been susceptible to bias. Is there really a gene for everything? Is there really a way to determine criminality through physical appearances? Are there really “natural-born killers” with tainted blood? How can we use technologies such as photography to solve crime while remaining free of bias? In addition, since privacy is such an important concept now, by taking photographs of suspects, how can we protect the privacy of foreigners while protecting ourselves from the criminal? And according to the Victorian social philosophy, are we taking photographs of criminals just to keep them on the outskirts of our society and assure ourselves that they are “not us”?