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Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau 1, rue de la Division du Général Leclerc 94250 Gentilly, France

PRESS

KIT

Olivier Bourgoin agence révélateur +33 (0)6 63 77 93 68 olivierbourgoin@agencerevelateur.fr

Robert Pareja Maison Doisneau +33 (0)1 55 01 04 85

r.pareja@agglo-valdebievre.fr

CONTACTS

www.maisondoisneau.agglo-valdebievre.fr

The Maison de la Photographie Robert Doisneau

is an establishment of the Public Territorial Grand-

Orly Val-de-Bièvre Seine-Amont

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PAPIERS, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT!

Collections of Musée Nicéphore Niépce

de Chalon-sur-Saône

Collection Ivan Epp

EXHIBITION FROM OCTOBER 19TH TO

DÉCEMBER 31TH 2016 AT THE MAISON

DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE ROBERT

DOISNEAU, GENTILLY

EXHIBITION PRODUCED BY LA CHAMBRE,

STRASBOURG IN COOPERATION WITH

THE MUSÉE NICÉPHORE NIÉPCE,

CHALON-SUR-SAÔNE

__________________________________

OPENING EXHIBITION

TUESDAY OCTOBER 18TH 2016 AT 6 PM

THE MAISON DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE ROBERT DOISNEAU IS MEMBER OF

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PAPIERS, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT!

Collections of Musée Nicéphore Niépce

de Chalon-sur-Saône

Collection Ivan Epp

Papiers s’il vous plait ! (Your papers

please!) takes advantage of the

considerable collection of images that

were made available by the Musée

Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône.

It also presents the images of Ivan Epp,

who is a collector from Strasbourg as

well as images from the Atelier Robert

Doisneau and the GB Agency Galery

This exhibition title in the form of an

injunction aptly underlines the

relationship between photography and

law enforcement, which dates back to

when it was first used in the court

process in the middle of the 19th century.

At some point in time, we have all had to

present proof of our identity, an exercise

that if it does not define who we truly

are, is the inescapable manifestation of

our legal identity. Ever since it was

invented, photography has ceaselessly

complied with the requirements of

identifying people and the desire to put

them on file, a theme that is still topical

today. Based on the Musée Nicéphore

Niépce’s collection, this exhibition aims

to present an (inevitably incomplete)

view of photography’s ambiguous

relationship with this role that it has had

to assume and the whole question of

police records.

Photography provides a frame of

reference, an interpretation of the

meaning of identity, from having a

passport photo taken to presenting your

driving licence to the police, or from a

census for national service to registering

the identity of migrants. If the standards

applied and the repetitive nature of the

process lead to a form of depletion that is

an integral part of the process, the images

nonetheless reveal hidden meanings and

sometimes exhibit more than what was

expected and intended. In part a means of

organising society and partly a system of

surveillance that exposes the temptation

to curb personal freedoms, the image-

based registration and classification

process unintentionally reveals – in its

mistakes, blunders and omissions – a

whole world outside the camera frame

made up of discrepancies, absurdities,

fantasy and imagination.

THERE’S NO ESCAPING IT Whether it’s for a driving licence or

passport, a travel card or a student card

or even in some countries your national

health card, one day or another we all

have to go through the troublesome

process of having our ID photo taken. In

line with the anthropometric principles

established by Bertillon and, irrespective

of whether the photo is taken by a

professional photographer or in a photo

booth, it must comply with a certain

number of criteria and standards that

determine whether the image in question

is acceptable or not for official use. If

the photo booth – an automatic device

that was presented in France for the first

time in 1889 at the Paris Exposition

Universelle – was at first barely

tolerated or even refused by the

administration, it wasn’t long before it

became the standard. Although there are

fingerprints, various kinds of registration

numbers and maybe soon biometric

information, the face remains the central

element of the identity card. This

document is in fact still optional in

France, however it is mandatory for

numerous everyday situations. Today

isn’t the person who cannot produce

their identity papers just as suspect as

one whose identity is on record?

In France, it was during the Vichy

FROM OCTOBER 19TH TO DÉCEMBER 31TH 2016

Curators

EMELINE DUFRENNOY

and ANNE-CÉLINE BESSON

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regime that the obligation to record the

identities of the entire population was

instituted, thereby widening the scope of

the identity controls that were until then

reserved for minorities who were

considered a danger to society. On the

other hand, identity papers have been

required to leave the French territory

since 1913, an obligation that was

implemented both with an eye to

restricting circulation between France and

foreign countries and to hinder the arrival

of foreigners. So in fact, the original idea

behind ID papers was all about

controlling the borders, which is pertinent

in our current times when the flow of

migrants and the free circulation of

people have become once more major

political and social questions.

PHOTOGRAPHY AT THE SERVICE

OF A SYSTEM

The French police photograph system,

which produces what are more commonly

known in English-speaking countries as

mug shots, was created by Alphonse

Bertillon (1853-1914) and such photos

are still a central element of police

records today. Bertillon is an emblematic

figure in the history of the French police

to whom is attributed the creation the first

police forensic laboratory. In 1881 in

Paris, in a general political context

marked by the battle to reduce the number

of repeat offenders, he devised a system

using anthropometry for criminal

identification purposes: a system of

measurements and physical characteristics

that placed the body at the centre of the

identification process. In 1888, Alphonse

Bertillon completed his system by

standardising the mug shot, which

henceforth had to be taken from the

front and in profile. He codified every

aspect of the process (the camera used,

the subject’s pose and distance from the

camera, as well as lighting etc). The

technical quality of the images had to be

sufficient to establish precise points of

resemblance and to ensure it was possible

to produce a large number of images on

a daily basis.

The Bertillon system or ‘Bertillonnage’

triumphed at the Paris Exposition

Universelle in 1889 and was rapidly

adopted across Europe, Russia and the

United States. Between 1885 and 1914,

legislation against recidivism in France

would lead to more than half a million

people being put on file. As soon as the

system appeared, however, Bertillon’s

wrongful identifications were denounced

and the possible dangers and abuses of

such a system were pointed out.

Above and beyond keeping a record of

ex-convicts and high-risk populations,

the question was how to exploit these

files by implementing techniques to

recognise people, produce bulletins and

wanted notices and distribute the portraits

to the police forces and general public. If

the police identification techniques that

were implemented at the end of the 19th

century do indeed symbolise the modernisation

of the police force, they rapidly also

became emblematic of the police’s

abuse of their position, state control of

the population and the inherent dangers

of this system.

Photography of criminal records office Anonymous, USA, 1970’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

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Its errors and imprecision, as well the

specific form of the mug shot, soon

became a subject of reinterpretation as

artists such as Mac Adams gave a new

twist to the subject by making use of the

specific codes of the genre to question

the spectator’s world view, the play of

appearances and the ambiguity of the

photographic image when confronted

with reality.

A SOURCE OF SCANDALS

No less than a cultural phenomenon,

police identification photos were the

subject of enthusiastic interest from the

press as soon as they were invented. It

wasn’t long before mug shots, even if

their main function was to assist the

police in their investigations, were

nonetheless used to illustrate news items

in newspapers such as Détective, Le

Magasin pittoresque and L'œil de la

police… At the end of the 19th century,

a current of sensationalism overwhelmed

the press, fuelling the imagination of

readers in the same way as detective

novels and reinforcing the credibility of

the police forensic department.

The images showcased in this part of

the exhibition are taken from the ‘faits

divers’ (news in brief) section of the

Petit Parisien’s photographic archives.

Le Petit Parisien was a French

newspaper founded by Louis Andrieux,

a member of parliament for the radical

party and public prosecutor, which was

published from 1876 to 1944. It was one

of the main newspapers during the

French Third Republic. In the middle of

the 1880s, this influential and informative

political paper, which also published

stories by Maupassant and Jules Verne

in instalments, began to take an interest

in gossip and rumours, scandals and

risqué subjects with an eye to increasing

its circulation. This trend continued until

the Occupation. The photos on show

here illustrate both Le Petit Parisien’s

efforts to build up an image bank, in

particular thanks to photos with very

precise captions that were obtained from

the police, as well as the use of retouching,

photomontage and the annotations

required to print these photos in the

newspaper.

A SECURITARIAN UTOPIA

The arrest photo can be traced back to

the origins of photography and, if some

people recommended its use primarily to

keep track of criminals and record repeat

offenses, putting people on file was for a

long time mainly limited to minorities

who were considered dangerous with the

aim of keeping certain members of

society under surveillance. The visual

identification of certain categories of the

population who were a cause for concern

- foreigners, travellers, bohemians,

drifters and criminals – because a new

and vital question for many European

states.

According to Bertillon himself, the

process usually reserved for criminals

could also be applied to ‘professional’ or

‘ethnic’ types. It was in this context that

in 1912, a system of identification was

instituted in France that saw the

elaboration of an anthropometric card

for nomadic populations in which

Alphonse Bertillon took an active role.

For the very first time, populations

judged solely for their chosen lifestyle

FROM OCTOBER 19TH TO DÉCEMBER 31TH 2016

Le Petit Parisien, Anonymous, France, between 1920 and 1930. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

François Cornu, murderer of Mme Duperray, Le Petit Parisien, january 9th 1931 © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

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were obliged to carry a document that

not only stigmatised them, but also

legitimised their exclusion from the

national community. It wasn’t until June

2015 that the French parliament voted

the abolition of the ‘livret de circulation

des gens du voyage’ (special permit for

travellers) whose origins can be traced

back to the identification system of

1912.

Migrants, residents of colonies and

occupied territories and prostitutes…

Other populations which were conspired

to constitute a risk were also subject to

large scale registration operations,

always for the purpose of control and

social discipline. This was the case, for

example, of Colonel Deleuze’s 1,500

portraits of members of the indigenous

population taken in Lebanon and Syria

after WWI in the former Ottoman

Empire, whose lands had been shared

between France and England. These

prints produced according to a very

strict protocol, numbered and all printed

in the same format, bear witness to the

systemisation of filing people, the rigour

brought to bear on their identification

and the strategic importance given to

knowledge of the French zone in Syria.

A STEP SIDEWAYS Sometimes however it is out of the very

context of surveillance and control of

the population that an act of resistance is

born, a step sideways that lets individuality

and personality show through, and

reveals the individual’s disapproval of

the standardisation of a group.

In the middle of the Algerian War, when

the photographer Marc Garanger (who

was a soldier at the time) had to take

the photos of women who were forced

to remove their veils, or when Virxilio

Vieitez took the portraits of the

inhabitants of villages in Galicia in

Spain under the reign of Franco for

identity cards that had become

obligatory, the process used and

purpose of these images were not

supposed to leave any doubt as to their

message and future use. And yet, the

serious faces of the subjects, the

jewellery and clothes they chose, the

expression in their eyes and the

meaning it conveyed and finally the

photographic gesture itself are like

interstices into which the unexpected,

as well as a certain form of revelation

can slip and transcend a system that is

intended to be cold, rigid and

scientific.

Sometimes out of this highly

standardised system, a whimsical and

out of place gesture is born. One

example is the actions of the Paris

Vice Squad which, on May 4th 1990

during the arrest and expulsion of 800

transvestites from the Bois de

Boulogne, took mug shots of the

transvestite prostitutes, most of whom

were Brazilian. To this first official

image, they added a second portrait

with a twist, a close-up in which the

subject of the photo was free to pose

for the camera as they pleased, with an

attitude and expression chosen by the

model himself that shifted the process

giving it a whole new meaning and

intention.

Anonymous, France, 1960’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

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PAPIERS, S’IL VOUS PLAÎT!

Collection « Carnet » of the Maison

de la Photographie Robert

Doisneau

texts : Anne-Céline Besson et Emeline

Dufrennoy

50 pages

English — French

On sale only

at the Maison Doisneau : 4 €

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Photography of criminal records office Anonymous, USA, 1970’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Photography of criminal records office Anonymous, USA, 1970’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Photography of criminal records office Anonymous, USA, 1970’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône François Cornu, murderer of Mme Duperray, Le Petit Parisien, januaryy 9th 1931 © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Dijon Anonymous, France, between1905 and 1910. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône Anthropometric portraits Anonymous, France, beginning of the 20th century. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône Photography of criminal records office Anonymous, USA, 1970’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

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These images may be used copyright free

by the press for the sole purpose of

promoting the exhibition at the Maison de

la Photographie Robert Doisneau and

only during the duration of the latter.

Anonymous, France, 1960’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône Anonymous, France, 1950’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Anthropometric index card, Washington DC Anonymous, USA, 1960’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Le Petit Parisien, photomontages Anonymous, France, between 1920 and 1930. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône Instructions pour l'entretien de la machine Photomaton Anonymous, France, 1950’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône Playing cards Anonymous, USA, 2003. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Anonymous, France, 1960’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

Anthropometric index card, Washington DC Anonymous, USA, 1960’s. © Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône

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