Artist: Alphonse-Joseph-Amédée Bertillon
Date: 1884
Museum: Museum of the Civil Guard (Madrid, Spain)
Technique: Metal
Camera for taking photographs of criminals for police records, devised in 1884 by the French anthropologist Alphonse Bertillon. Considered one of the pioneers of anthropometry, he managed to apply the technique to this system of identifying criminals, which was named after him. Anthropometry is based on the study and measurement of different parts of the body that vary between individuals. He applied metric photography, which had fixed rules (for the height of the camera, position, distance from the subject, etc.) and required at least one photograph from the front and one from the side. This camera guaranteed compliance with these rules. Not only that, it could take very precise photographs of the outer ear—another part of the body that the anthropologist discovered to contain numerous details that are unique to each person, allowing them to be identified over a great number of years. This camera was used to photograph the right ear. Over time, as new identification techniques were discovered, such as fingerprints and DNA, this method fell out of use.
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