One by One

There were three specific topics in Gunning's essay "Tracing the Individual Body" that caught my attention. The first is the concept of circulation. Gunning uses the word circulation with a double meaning of people and traffic, and also coin. He mentions the connection between the circulation in photography and the circulation of money. Because of the new mechanical reproducibility, a single print can take form thousands of times and belong to thousands of people. With the circulation of each print, there is a circulation of money. Gunning recognizes the capitalist driven society and applauds photography for jumping into the market and fitting in so quickly and easily.
The second topic that interested me was the mug shot. Oh yes, it is funny that the criminals made funny faces, but the way that detectives and police got around these illusions is even more fascinating. Gunning quotes Alan Sekula,"he did this by yoking anthropometrics (the precise measurement of body parts), the optical precision of hte camera, a refined physiognomonic vocabulary and statistics." The police meticulously measured every body part of each criminal photographed and filed the photographs by the proportion of the person. Since each photograph was standardized, each criminal could be identified even if the face was distorted. A simple hair cut or dye could no longer hide guilt, a change would now have to be made to the fingers, ears, head size, etc. Changing all of these characteristics would be impossible.
The last minor detail that caught my eye in Gunning's essay is the fact that little details catch people's eyes. A man caught sight of his wife on screen with another man and got extremely jealous. However, photographs leave out all context, so even the most important details, even through present, can be overlooked, and other details can be misinterpreted. The wife was actually with her brother, but the photograph could not give the husband such a hint to calm his jealousy. The evolution of the photograph is film, which does give context because it tells an entire story.