Unidentified photographer / artist
1867, 15 March
Photographs for Identification of Individuals

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Published in "The British Journal of Photography", March 15, 1867, p.128
 
Photographs For Identification Of Individuals. We trust there will be no such difficulties experienced at the Paris Exhibition with the photographs of the season-ticket holders as are comically described in the following paragraph from the Paris correspondent of the Dally Telegraph: "There appears to be a general impression that the Imperial Commission have acted somewhat hastily in laying down as an inexorable rule that every season-ticket holder must be provided with a photographic carte de visite, which he will be bound to present at the Exhibition turnstiles whenever called upon to do so. Just as some illnatured people are going about saying that the abandonment of the awning plan is a concession to the umbrella and parasol makers of Paris, so does this photographic edict smell very suspiciously of a sop thrown out to the pnotographers of Paris the dearest, and certainly not the best, photographers in Europe. You can photograph an individual against his will witness the portraits taken of distinguished criminals by the governors of county gaols, and the cognate effigies of the tigers and hyaenas in the Zoological Gardens; but it is quite a new principle of jurisprudence to compel a man to go and be photographed, and carry his carte de visite about with him like a passport. You cannot compel a man to have money it is only so much the worse for him if he have none; and by a parity of reasoning you cannot force him to have a carte de visite. Suppose he can't afford one; suppose he loses it; suppose the carte was done when he was thin, and he has grown fat before the Exhibition opens; if he shaves off his moustaches or lets his whiskers grow, if he supplements his baldness by a wig, or substitutes Shakspeare collars for stickups, is he to rush to a photographer's and be 'carted' every time he makes one of those cardinal changes in his appearance ? M. Cham, the caricaturist, has put the objections to this preposterous regulation very forcibly and wittily. A gentleman who has dropped a spot of ink over his photographic face is denied admission, but he lends the blotted carte to a gentleman from Ethiopia, who forthwith gains ingress to the palace. An old lady insists on bringing her dog in with her, on the ground that Loulou Loulou is a poodle was on her lap when she was photographed, and that without Loulou her portrait would not be like her. And finally which is entirely and unmistakably French a blushing matron brings her baby, and claims gratuitous admission for the infant, saying, Le petit, voyez-vous, j'était pas né quand je me suit fait photographier. The Imperial Commission had better abandon a rule which will never work, and which will make touchy people very angry."
 
LL/34459