Charrié. Léon, Joseph. 27 ans, né à Paris XVllle. Garçon Plombier. Anarchiste. 1/3/94.
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
10.5 x 7 x 0.5 cm (4 1/8 x 2 3/4 x 3/16 in.) each
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Museum Purchase, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.375.100
Tags
Art Historical Context
In 1894, French forensic pioneer Alphonse Bertillon captured this stark portrait of Léon Joseph Charrié, a 27-year-old plumber's apprentice Paris's 18thondissement, labeled an "anarchiste." The image, part of Bertillon's revolutionary anthropometric system—known as *bertillonage*—documents Charrié's arrest on January 3 amid France's turbulent "Age of Anarchism." This era saw a wave of bombings and political assassinations, including the killing of President Sadi Carnot, fueling government crackdowns on radicals. Bertillon, chief of the Paris Prefecture's Identification Service, standardized c...
About the Artist
Alphonse Bertillon · 1853–1914
Alphonse Bertillon (1853–1914) was a pioneering French photographer whose work revolutionized forensic documentation, transforming police identification into a precise visual science. Born in Paris on April 22, 1853, he was the son of medical professor and statistician Louis-Adolphe Bertillon and the younger brother of demographer Jacques Bertillon. Lacking formal higher education after expulsion ...