Mauroy. Alfred, Édouard. 34 ans, né à Paris VIIe. Dessinateur. Anarchiste. 26/2/94.
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
2005.100.375.283
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the turbulent Paris of 1894, amid fears of anarchist violence following a series of bombings, forensic pioneer Alphonse Bertillon documented Alfred Édouard Mauroy, a 34-year-old draftsman born in the city's 7th arrondissement. Titled with meticulous detail—"Mauroy. Alfred, Édouard. 34 ans, né à Paris VIIe. Dessinateur. Anarchiste. 26/2/94"—this compact albumen silver print from a glass negative (10.5 x 7 cm) captures Mauroy's stern profile in the stark, standardized pose of Bertillon's revolutionary identification system. Bertillon, chief of the Paris Prefecture's Identification Service, i...
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 ...