Samenvatting

This article describes the first applications of photography as a practice and technique for police surveillance during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It explores how, through the growing use of photography in law enforcement, the criminal subject was increasingly followed, registered, classified and studied. The article reveals that photographic representations and surveillance shifted from the criminal body (mug shots) to abstract data (fingerprints). However, through describing the history of surveillance, the paper shows that also important patterns of continuity with contemporary practices of (digital) surveillance exist, in particular regarding the cultural motivations underpinning its trajectory and use of technologies.