Mauroy. Alfred, Édouard. 34 ans, né à Paris VIIe. Dessinateur. Anarchiste. 26/2/94.

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, invented anthropometry in the 1880s: a blend of precise body measurements, front and side-view photographs, and descriptive notations to catalog criminals irrefutably, predating fingerprints. The albumen process, prized for its sharp detail and tonal richness, lent these "judicial photographs" a haunting documentary precision, transforming mugshots into tools of state surveillance. Today, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection, this image transcends criminology to reveal fin-de-siècle France's social unrest. It humanizes Mauroy—not just an "anarchiste," but an individual—while highlighting photography's shift from art to forensic science, a pivotal moment in visual culture.

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 ...