Galton

In his article "The Body and the Archive," Allan Sekula explores the careers of two late nineteenth century men who attempted to utilize photography for divergent, but related, purposes. Bertillon invented a system for cataloging criminals' facial features with photographs so that they could be identified under their true identity if arrested again. Galton, on the other hand, tried to prove that facial features were intrinsically tied to one's actual character and constitution. For Galton, one's face could indicate intelligence, moral ability, and a host of other virtues. He was particularly interested in showing that criminals adhered to a general facial type.

I found Galton incredibly interesting, especially in that his wish to be able to readily identify the social deviant on sight seems to fall in line with today's mainstream media's tactics for representing the other. For instance, as Crimp talks about in his article, the PWA is represented by their physical maladies and their identity is replaced by it. The implied fear is made explicit when we learn that, for one health commissioner Crimp quotes, that the most worrisome aspect about a PWA is that when they're in remission, they show no bodily signs of having AIDS, that they are not immediately identifiable. Thus, just as Galton fears a criminal with no visible outward facial markings, the health official fears the PWA in remission.

Though the conscious effort to conflate physical features with actual personal identity in the form of an empiricism has fallen off, other more casual modes still abound, as the above paragraph illustrates. The media still represent groups with singular images ("welfare moms," "hippies," "terrorists") and is still surprised when these images are contradicted (e.g. white woman terrorist). Moreover, racial profiling still abounds.