Photographic Passport Biometry

When ICAO approved a new standard for international passports, they recommended including a high-resolution facial image on a chip in addition to the visual portrait on the identity page. Accordingly, there is, in a certain sense, two images in the current passport, one on the chip, the other visually displayed. In this article I relate the functional distribution between these two images to the nineteenth-century mugshot and argue that the photographically generated images in the current passport represent a subdued tension between two parallel paths in the history of photography: depiction and measurement. By looking at the arguments for facial recognition technologies in today's passport as specified by ICAO, I argue that the current regulation of international mobility downplays the importance of physical measurements and hides this behind photography’s more familiar function, namely depiction. This contributes to conceal biometrics as a tool for power and control in today’s society.