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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 [email protected]
Robert Pareja Maison Doisneau +33 (0)1 55 01 04 85
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
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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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