Configuring the Face as a Technology of Citizenship: Biometrics, Surveillance and the Facialization of Institutional Identity

Abstract

Images of face have been used as legal representation of individuals since the Renaissance when oils on canvas allowed for unprecedented detail and realism (Snyder 1985). However, it was not until well after the invention of photography that faces became integrated into identification documents. Although police departments in the UK began taking mug shots as early as the 1850s (Norris and Armstrong 1999), it was the Geary Act (1892), an extension of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which became the first legislation to require photographs of faces to accompany identification documents for re-entry into the US. The nineteenth century proponents of photography argued that photographs established a concrete indexical link between the document and the individual. However, in practice, immigration inspectors found that “photographic truth” (Tagg 1988) could be co-opted to construct “paper families” (Pegler-Gordon 2009). Despite the experiences of immigration inspectors, in 1914 the US State Department called for photographs to be added to passports (Lloyd 2003), and since then facial images have become a dominant component of globally recognized identification documents