Response to Wells p.167-192

I really enjoyed the part of this week’s Wells reading that pertained to classification. It’s interesting how photography played into beliefs that seem very strange to us today such as phrenology and physiognomy. Photographs helped to turn people into types. They were used to clarify and show what traits were of certain people by making composites. They would use this to see traits shared among certain groups. One in particular that the book showed was traits among Jewish people. These composites were put together by a Jewish man in order to validate Jewish identity. It is interesting to notice how these composites could be seen in a good light as well as bad depending on who exactly put this together or was viewing it. The original context for this particular image was good, he wanted to unify the Jewish population. Composites were also used to define criminals which could be bad. People with certain traits were generalized together and labeled as criminals even if they were in fact not.