51
came increasingly to mean physical anthropology as in
France. In the United States the term ‘ethnology’ was
eventually superseded by ‘anthropology,’ embracing
physical and cultural anthropology and archaeology.
These complexities of terminology were part of the
search for methodologies to explain racial and cultural
difference. Photographs made and used in these contexts
were integral to this process. The shape of major col-
lections of anthropological photographs were forged by
these intellectual traditions for gathering and organising
scientifi c knowledge and the specifi c political, economic
and social agendas operating within the various national
colonial policies and aspirations. For instance, German
anthropological collections are generally founded on a
more inclusive defi nition of ‘anthropological interest’
than British collections of the same date which include
little travel photography which might be described as
‘ethnographic,’ such as that of Samuel Bourne or John
Thomson, because it fell outside contemporary concepts
of ‘anthropological’ data.
The dominant theories of cultural difference were
evolutionary or at least progressivist—the best known
and most infl uential being Darwinism. Within this cul-
ture was perceived as being biologically determined.
Consequently photographs of culture were read through
a racial grid and visa versa, in a way which makes it
diffi cult to separate ‘cultural anthropology’ photographs
from ‘physical anthropology’ or ‘ethnology.’ Closely
related to other photographies of colonial expansion
such as missions, travel and exploration, anthropologi-
cal photography embraced both photographs taken with
specifi cally anthropological intentions and those, be-
cause of their content, deemed to have ‘anthropological
interest’ though they were not specifi cally scientifi c. The
mutability of photographs gave them evidential value
within different interpretative frameworks, In any case
many photographs could be used as documents of both
race and culture, for instance those of Japanese offi cials
taken for the Musee de Paris by L. Rousseau and M.
Potteau in the early 1860s. Much nineteenth century
anthropological photography was thus defi ned through
its subject matter and the way it was used rather than
specifi c styles.
Whatever the different national and intellectual ori-
entations in anthropology, photography was used with
precisely similar intentions, to produce visual facts
which combined the certainties of mechanical inscrip-
tion with those of scientifi c observation. There were two
interrelated purposes in the amassing of photographs.
First, ‘salvage ethnography’ recorded cultural practices
which were perceived to be ‘dying out’ in the face
of inexorable cultural evolutionary advance. Second
photography provided raw data which could be com-
pared and contrasted within the scientifi c taxonomies
of the day, by scholars in the interpreting centres of
the universities and learned scientifi c societies of the
Euro-American world. In these contexts, photographs
were integral to the defi nition and reifi cation of racial
and cultural hierarchies. Yet there is a strong sense in
which anthropological photography created its own ob-
ject of study, focusing in the ‘culturally pure,’ primitive
or traditional, excluding evidence of colonial infl uence
or social change.
There were strong links between anthropology and
colonial government. This was most marked in India.
James Forbes-Watson and J.W. Kaye’s great photo-
graphic compilation People of India (1868–1875)
attempted to describe visually the people, manners
and customs of the Indian sub-continent and their clas-
sifi cation. Some of the earliest ethnographic books with
photographic illustrations are on India, such as James
Wilkinson Breeks Account of the Primitive Tribes
and Monuments of the Nilagiri (1873). Although the
systematic Ethnological Survey of India, suggested in
1882, was not realised until 1901, photography was
nonetheless used extensively throughout the period to
defi ned the colonial subject both racially and culturally.
This relationship between anthropological photography
and government was also more loosely instrumental in
defi ning views of indigenous peoples in settler colonial-
isms of Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Throughout the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury there were attempts to improve both the quality
and quantity of data available to anthropologists. A
number of publications gave guidance for collecting
information, including the taking of photographs. Many
specifi cally photographic instructions,, for instance
those of Paul Broca in France (1864), were concerned
with phyisical anthroplogy. The systematization of the
social and cultural was more diffi cult, photography’s
utility in visualising such information was more often
implied than explicit.
In 1874 the British Association for the Advancement
of Science (BAAS) published Notes and Queries on
Anthropology with questions ranging from physical
anthropology to religious beliefs, marriage forms, mor-
als, treatment of women, forms of greeting, presence
of cannibalism, manufacture of pottery or the concept
of art. The intended photographic section was never
published, nonetheless questions elicited photographic
responses; the earliest being by E.H. Man in the Anda-
man Islands (1876), who posed tableaux specifi cally
to answer several questions about culture in one pho-
tographic frame. The third edition (1899) was the fi rst
to carry detailed photographic advice. Written by A.C.
Haddon, it covered both technical matters, such as the
problems of rubber parts in the tropics, and comments
on the posing, aesthetics and social relations of photo-
graphy. Similar methodological volumes and question
lists appeared in France, although formal instructions