Marietta Kesting

Traces of Bodies and Operational Portraits

On the Construction of Pictorial Evidence

This article briefly retraces some of the historical events leading to the creation
of photographic identity cards with passport photos and fingerprints, and to the
present development of DNA forensics, focusing on the transformation of the
broad documentation of the body and its visualization. Since when and how have
bodies been tied to a name, a place of birth, and a country of citizenship by pass-
port photos and fingerprints as an index – or in the future potentially by a DNA
trace – with the objective being to make a particular body unambiguously recog-
nizable and identifiable? “The passport is the noblest part of a human being. […]
A human being can come into existence anywhere, anytime, in the most careless
manner, but never a passport.” 1 Or to switch perspective, as the title of a book on
diaspora studies summarized, “God needs no passport.” 2 Human beings, however,
are obliged to allow themselves to be identified and need to be recognized – some-
thing that even Odysseus struggled with on his return in ancient Greece – other-
wise they are not welcome.
Nowadays passports usually combine fingerprints and a passport photo. The
fingerprint is a contact print, a physical trace, produced by direct contact by the
finger on a surface. As the art historian Bettina Uppenkamp notes, “[…] the ease
with which in the imprint of the human hand the gesture results in a figure, con-
tact in a likeness, or to express it semiotically, an index turns into an icon.” 3 Hand
imprints are the oldest surviving pictorial symbols. Fingerprints are different for
each individual and are useful for unambiguous identification, but this cannot
happen on “first sight” and instead requires the respective person to cooperate or
to be arrested.

1 Bertolt Brecht: Flüchtlingsgespräche, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1961, p. 7. [Translation by

the author] All translations are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.
2 Peggy Levitt: God Needs No Passport, New York: The New Press, 2007.
3 Bettina Uppenkamp: Der Fingerabdruck als Indiz. Macht, Ohnmacht und künstlerische Mark-
ierung. In: Bildwelten des Wissens, 8, 1, 2010, p.7.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
100 Marietta Kesting

Citizen’s identity cards

The history of mandatory identification starts with the French Revolution in 1789,
which declared all male inhabitants of France citizens.4 When war was imminent,
passport laws were introduced to control the crossing of state borders, to prevent
the nation’s own population from leaving, and to register all army conscripts and
distinguish them from “foreigners.”
This introduction of mandatory identification is part of the modern disci-
plining of the population, which Michel Foucault analyzed in detail and described
as creating specific laws and regulations for every aspect of people’s lives.5 These
events in France therefore mark the creation of the first modern administrative
state. Many other European countries followed suit and implemented similar laws
not just “at home” but also in their colonies.

Being recognized
The situation changed completely in the first half of the 19th century with the
invention of a number of photographic processes. Physical objects were depicted
mechanically through the optical-chemical trace of light. The media and percep-
tion theorist Rudolf Arnheim noted: “The physical objects draw their own likeness
by the means of the optical and chemical functionality of the light.” 6 For the first
time it seemed technically viable to record the human face indexically and auto-
matically without any disturbance or interference. In France, the inventor and pho-
tographer André Disdéri obtained a patent for business cards that included small
photographic portraits. These cartes de visite were affordable and soon became
very popular.7 At the same time, the advantages that photography offered for the
identification of persons were also recognized. In 1870, hundreds of members of
the Paris Commune were identified using photographs and subsequently killed.8
This demonstrates how the recording and storing of the human bodies and faces

4 The first declaration was only meant for “mature” citizens, meaning women were excluded.
The suffragete Olympes de Gouges presented her “Declaration of the rights of the woman and
female citizen” 1791 at the National Assembly. Olympe de Gouges: Schriften, Frankfurt am
Main: Stroemfeld, Roter Stern, 1989.
5 Michel Foucault: Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House, 1975.
6 Rudolf Arnheim: Die Seele in der Silberschicht. Medientheoretische Texte. Photographie – Film –
Rundfunk, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, (1974) 2004, p. 24.
7 Jochen Voigt: Faszination Sammeln. Cartes de Visite. Eine Kulturgeschichte der photo­g ra­phi­schen
Visitenkarte, Chemnitz: Edition Mobilis, 2006.
8 Gisèle Freund: Photographie und Gesellschaft, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1979, p. 119.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
Traces of Bodies and Operational Portraits 101

of the population made each individual identifiable by the police. In this historical
situation, however, to be recognized amounted to a death sentence.

Government-issued passports with a passport photo

In 1914, Prussia passed a new passport law and for the first time legally required
passport photos for each identity card. The issuing authority asked for two pass-
port photos; one was kept on file in the local office, whilst the other was inserted
in the identification documents. The photograph was glued onto the official docu-
ment and stamped on both sides so that it could not be removed undetected. The
following text was added: “The owner of the passport is effectively the person
represented in the photograph, and he or she has personally signed his or her
name below it.” 9 (fig. 1)
Here we find a symbiotic relationship between image and text, which are
only able to create evidence in conjunction with each other. Furthermore, “wanted”
photographs used to apprehend suspects or criminals and passport photographs
are genealogically linked.10 The formal prerequisites and the standardized pro-
cedure for taking the photo in front of a neutral, bright background aesthetically
turn all passport photos into wanted photos, changing the individuals represented
into wanted criminals. For this reason, subjects almost always disidentify with
their passport photo, often saying, “I don’t really look like this,” when they present
it in private.
In addition, people having their passport photo taken are acutely aware that
they are being photographed. This knowledge is translated into their facial expres-
sion. Arnheim described this special looking back:

“This is the human being when he is exposed to other’s gaze: He needs a persona
and asks himself how he comes across; he is in danger or may receive a fortune –
simply due to the fact that he is being looked at.” 11

For this reason, passport photographs seem to mortify their subjects and create
self-evidence. They have the status of a visual document, presenting the most

9 Cf. Andreas Reisen: Der Passexpedient. Geschichte der Reisepässe, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012,
(see image 1 here), Image. 65, p. 97.
10 Cf. Susanne Regener: Bildtechnik und Blicktechnik. In: id.: Fotografische Erfassung: zur
Geschichte medialer Konstruktionen des Kriminellen, München: Fink, 1999, pp. 161–167.
11 Rudolf Arnheim (s. fn. 6), p. 27. Cf. also Roland Barthes: Camera Lucida, New York: Farrar Straus
& Giroux, 1981, p. 10–16 and Allan Sekula: The Body and the Archive. In: October, 39, Winter
1986, p. 3–64.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
102 Marietta Kesting

1: Identity card, 1932.

factual portrait. A passport or identification document is usually a material object

in which photography and citizenship intersect, and that assists the nation-state
in producing or constructing the male or female citizen with a fixed nationality,
place and date of birth. The passport with a photo has a dual purpose: making
every individual identifiable and hence controllable, but also turning each and
every individual into a set of data that can be compared with other individuals
and organized into groups by religion, age, or other categories of difference in
statistical analyses.

Recognizing citizens, foreigners and gender roles

Passport photos can be considered a special kind of operational image. According
to the image theorist W. J. T. Mitchell, being addressing by an image that “includes
the spectator as the target of pictorial gaze” 12 can be linked to Louis Althusser’s
concept of “interpellation.” In Althusser’s famous example, a policeman calls out,

12 W.J.T. Mitchell: What Do Pictures Want: The Lives and Loves of Images, Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004, p. 49.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
Traces of Bodies and Operational Portraits 103

“Hey, you there!” on the street, whereupon the individual hailed turns around,
and in doing so, becomes a subject “because he has recognized that the hail was
‘really’ addressed to him, and that ‘it was really him who was hailed’”.13 The next
logical step in this scene would be for the policeman to say, “Identify yourself.”
In this way identification documents and police controls construct both citizens
and foreigners. Gender theorist Judith Butler reconsidered Althusser’s concept of
interpellation in the creation of gender roles. Butler analyzes the act of baptism
that turns a human being into a gendered subject (“It’s a girl!”).14 However, Butler
criticizes Althusser’s concept of interpellation as it assumes the figure of a sov-
ereign godly voice that is reduced to the moment of its articulation and does not
include any possibilities for resistance and rearticulation.15
In fact, a special case illustrating a new articulation of subjectivities can be
found even in the history of photographic identification. This is highly significant
as the ID photo together with the passport is usually a normative instrument that
does not allow any obscurities or positionings in-between, and codifies gender,
citizenship, and age. This exception is a special identity card that permitted and
facilitated the performing of the other gender role, and that was introduced and
distributed during the Weimar Republic by the pioneer of the study of sexuali-
ties Magnus Hirschfeld. It was called a “transvestite certificate or card.” 16 These
exceptions permitted by the police and the psychiatric establishment only existed
for a few years.
As an addendum, the continuation of the history of the identity card under
National Socialism should be noted. The National Socialists introduced a new law
on domestic mandatory identification on September 10, 1939. The identity card
and passport system was actively used to differentiate between Jews and non-Jews,
as is well known and has been extensively researched.17

13 Louis Althusser: Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In: id. (ed.): Lenin and Philosophy
and Other Essays, transl. by Ben Brewster, New York: Monthly Review, 1971, pp. 127–186, quote
p. 174. Emphasis in the original.
14 Cf. Judith Butler: Bodies That Matter, New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 232.
15 Butler (s. fn. 14), pp. 81–97.
16 Hans-Magnus Hirschfeld Archive. Cf. Magnus Hirschfeld: Transvestiten, Berlin: Verlag Alfred
Pulvermacher, 1910, pp. 192–198, and Rainer Herrn: Die falsche Hofdame vor Gericht: Trans-
vestitismus in Psychiatrie und Sexualwissenschaft oder die Regulierung der öffentlichen Klei-
derordnung. In: Medizinhistorisches Journal, 2014, 49, pp. 199–236.
17 On this issue, see Götz, Aly & Karl-Heinz Roth: Die restlose Erfassung. Volkszählen, Identifizieren,
Aussondern im Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, (1984) 2000.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
104 Marietta Kesting

DNA snapshots & Stranger Vision –

Constructing visualizations from physical traces
Since 2007, biometric passport photos have been recorded and stored together with
a digital fingerprint on a chip that is integrated in EU passports and German iden-
tity cards.18 When entering the United States, foreign citizens are photographed
again, and prints of all their fingers are taken. This indicates that the passport
photo has lost its privileged role in identification and is now only seen as evidence
when combined with other sets of data. The “truth” about a person is no longer
visible from the outside when comparing the individual to his/her photograph, but
is increasingly located within the individual and searched for by analyzing other
physical traces, including DNA. These types of physical traces are invisible to the
human eye and have to be extracted, sequenced, and calculated.
And yet even in the age of DNA, forensics has not abolished identification
images – on the contrary, visualizations similar to passport photos are still widely
used when a search is being conducted for an unknown person. Human perception
does not function without an image, and the face remains the most recognizable
part of a person in spite of all the difficulties in accurate identification. Here a con-
nection between bodily traces and their imagery is reconstructed that recalls the
earliest interactions between people and photographs. The writer Hubert Fichte,
a keen observer of the photographic medium, described the “magical beliefs”
ascribed to early photographic portraits:

“The photograph is considered a particle of the original; it gives one – as fin-

gernails or a lock of hair do – power over the other. Our grandparents carried
daguerreotypes of their loved ones on necklaces made of hair, or a photo of their
fiancée together with a lock of hair.” 19

It is not possible today to create an accurate image, similar to a photograph, from a

lock of hair, but imagery can be created from this physical trace of a specific body.
In this way, a missing person can be searched for, and the final validation of his/
her identification can be provided by comparing the DNA.
The American artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg explored this development by
collecting DNA traces of strangers in New York City, such as saliva on discarded

18 For information on electronic passports, see http://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/Themen/Mod-

erne-Verwaltung/Ausweise-Paesse/Reisepass/reisepass.html, acc. 08–2015.
19 Hubert Fichte: Schwarz/Weiß doppelt belichtet. Kleine Chronologie zum Werk des afro­a meri­
ka­nischen Fotografen van der Zee. In: Frankfurter Rundschau, January 12, 1980.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
Traces of Bodies and Operational Portraits 105

2: Heather Dewey-­Hagborg:
Stranger Vision.

chewing gum or a cigarette butt, and a strand of hair. At the biohacking lab Gen-
space, she extracted sequences of the genetic code found in her samples under
scientific supervision and used different primers to create a polymerase chain
reaction. 20 Then she could search for specific markers within the DNA sequence
for individual traits such as eye and hair color, a predisposition to freckles, a ten-
dency for obesity, and a number of other characteristics. 21 She fed the results into
a 3D modeling software that generated sculptural portrait busts from the data,
which were then printed with a 3D printer. The resulting portraits are not a com-
pletely accurate match; rather they show something akin to a family resemblance
(fig.  2+3). As a cross-check, the artist had first created a portrait from her own DNA
sample; the strong likeness it presented had surprised her. 22
Dewey-Hagborg’s piece received a lot of media attention and prompted a
discussion about (genetic) surveillance and the protection of personal data, visi-
bility in public spaces, and ethical issues. 23 These were exactly the questions she

20 Cf. NGO Genspace: http://genspace.org and http://thenewinquiry.com/sci­fi­crime­drama­w ith­

a­strong­black­lead/, both acc. 08–2015.
21 Dewey-Hagborg documents her process on her blog: https://deweyhagborg.wordpress.
com/2013/06/30/technical-details/, acc. 08–2015.
22 Natalie Angley: Artist creates faces from DNA left behind in public. In: CNN, http://edition.
cnn.com/2013/09/04/tech/innovation/dna-face-sculptures/, acc. 08–2015.
23 See also Gambino, Megan: Creepy or Cool? Portraits Derived from Hair and Gum Found in Pub-
lic Places. May 3, 2013, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/science-nature/creepy-­or-
cool-portraits-derived-from-the-dna-in-hair-and-gum-found-in-public-places-50266864/, acc.
08–2015.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
106 Marietta Kesting

3: Heather ­Dewey-Hagborg:
Stranger Vision.

had wanted to provoke, as she had done previously in other works that commented
critically on new technologies and scientific methods.
Without doubt, the portraits she created differ from passport photos in their
aesthetics, formal qualities, and technical aspects, and yet they have a similar
function: to trace an individual and make his or her face recognizable. Signifi-
cantly, the verbal metaphors for describing this new process are also taken from
photography as the technique has been termed a “DNA snapshot” and had been
commercially trademarked by the American company Parabon NanoLabs, even
though the process has nothing in common with the quick photographic snapshot,
relying instead on an elaborate calculation process that ultimately retranslates
data into visual form (fig. 4). 24

“DNA Phenotyping is the prediction of physical appearance from DNA. It can

be used to generate leads in cases where there are no suspects or database hits,
or to help identify remains. Using in-depth data mining and advanced machine
learning, and with support from the US Department of Defense, we have built
the SnapshotTM Forensic DNA Phenotyping System, which accurately predicts
genetic ancestry, eye color, hair color, skin color, freckling, and face shape in
individuals from any ethnic background, even mixed individuals.” 25

Parabon NanoLabs already offers this method commercially, and it is, of course,
no surprise that it supported by the US Department of Defense.

24 Parabon NanoLabs, https://snapshot.parabon-nanolabs.com, acc. 08–2015.

25 Parabon NanoLabs (s. fn. 24).

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
Traces of Bodies and Operational Portraits 107

4: Poster Parabon Nanolabs.

Conclusion: Mis/Recognition
The pursuit of exact recognition and identification still determines the making of
passports. Current photographic identification has to adhere to biometric stand-
ards and is complemented with digital fingerprints. This is meant to create “a closer
congruence between the identity card and its holder”, as EU governments put it.26
The process for creating identities by means of DNA traces is not yet viable, but
could be used in the future. These technologies are already being applied in their
current state in criminal forensics. 27 However, they are still dependent on visual-
izations because human beings have no organs of perception capable of directly
perceiving DNA sequences.
While trans* and inter* persons have been allowed to change their first
names and assigned gender in their passports in Germany since the passing of
the Transsexual Act in 1981, 28 DNA analysis seems to establish another way to
reach the genetic and objective “truth” of a person’s gender. 29 Moreover, critics
fear that DNA snapshots will further strengthen ethnic/racial profiling by the
police. “Racial profiling” refers to more frequent targeting of, and identity checks
on, non-white people by the police. Image theorist Nicholas Mirzoeff describes this

26 http://www.ausweis-app.com/elektronischer-aufenthaltstitel/, acc. 08–2015.

27 Andrew Pollack: Building a Face, and a Case, on DNA. In: New York Times, March 23, 2015.
28 Cf. the German Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency on trans*: http://www.antidiskrimini-
erungsstelle.de/DE/ThemenUndForschung/Geschlecht/Themenjahr_2015/Trans/trans_node.
html, acc. 08–2015.
29 For a critical discussion of the history of “objectivity“, see Peter Galison, Lorraine Daston:
­Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
108 Marietta Kesting

practice as creating a “nomadic border” that can be established at any time when
a “citizen” looks at a suspicious person who could be an undocumented migrant.30
This nomadic border is grounded in visual differences and seems to insist on
essentializing the materiality of the body. As gender theorist Verena Namberger
argues, existing structures of racial exclusion are not overcome by neomaterialist
conceptions of the body, and yet they are also not simply upheld. Rather:

“In the world of cyborgs, genetic codes, and virtuality, the articulations of racism
are altered. With the concept of bodies as assemblages, it is possible to analyze
how different concepts of race – biological or cultural, analogue or digital – are
not superseded, but ‘intra’-act and are sometimes mutually reinforced.” 31

Needless to say, DNA samples can also be forged and altered; they can be tainted
or changed, as is portrayed in the 1997 science fiction film Gattaca.32 The main
character, Vincent, whose genes are considered substandard, assumes the identity
of Jerome, who was a great athlete before an accident confined him to a wheelchair.
In this way, Vincent, who had been conceived “naturally” by his parents, can live
his dream of working for the elite space agency. Vincent receives blood and urine
samples, skin cells, and a fake fingerprint from Jerome. The film presents possi-
bilities for escaping the seemingly perfect control of subjects and assuming a new
identity.
“Self-identity is a bad visual system,” 33 stated the techno-science pioneer
Donna Haraway as early as 1988, thereby criticizing both the limitations of self-­
position in academic life as well as the often unreflected power systems in optical
appliances. Perceptual processes that we believe to be means by which to recognize
others and ourselves are always linked to the production of discernible differen­ces.
Photographic and similar images and visualizations are thereby always complicit
in producing knowledge about the bodies of others. They are part of delineation
processes, a function they still hold today, even after photography has lost its
privileged position as a trusted producer of evidence and objectivity. At the same

30 Nicholas Mirzoeff: The Right to Look. A Counterhistory of Visuality, Durham, NC: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2011, p. 282.
31 Verena Namberger: Rassismustheorien und die Materialität des Körpers. In: Tobias Goll et al.
(eds.): Critical Matter, Münster: Edition Assemblage, 2013, p. 145. Emphasis as in the original.
32 Andrew Nicoll (director): Gattaca. USA, 1997, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177, acc.
08–2015.
33 Donna Haraway: Situated Knowledges. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege
of Partial Perspective. In: Feminist Studies, 1988, 14, 3, p. 585.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
Traces of Bodies and Operational Portraits 109

time, it is impossible to frame subjects in a fixed position – as we have seen dur-

ing the Weimar Republic, when modern citizens were created, subcultures and
non-normative modes of subjectivation simultaneously emerged. For this reason,
subjects will always find modes of rearticulating imagery that is saturated with
(state) power so as to criticize and politically subvert it.

Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar

Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08
Angemeldet | kesting@adbk.mhn.de Autorenexemplar
Heruntergeladen am | 25.07.17 10:08