In the 19th century, Alphonse Bertillon, a French photographer and the son of a statistical anthropometrist, invented the mug shot to show these differences.

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But whereas mug shots encourage you to look for differences between yourself and the person in the photograph, Bertillon's turn-of-the-century crime-scene stills uncomfortably reveal similarities.

ECONOMIST: Most-wanted photography | The

Bertillon was also the first systematically to photograph crime scenes.

ECONOMIST: Most-wanted photography