52
were dominated by the concerns of physical anthropol-
ogy. In Germany, anthropology, with prehistory, was
contained within broader instructions for scientifi c
observation, Anleitung zu wissenschaftlichen Beod-
bachtungen auf Reisen. Produced under the auspices
of Admiralty, fi rst in 1875, this infl uential volume
included detailed technical photographic instructions
and discussion of desirable subject matter by Gustav
Fritsch. Later instructions from Emil Schmidts (1888)
and Felix von Luschan (1899) included photography
within systematic fi eld observation and collecting.
Overall such manuals had the effect of structuring
vision and thus photography through prescribing the
signifi cance of specifi c cultural traits.
In the United States the Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy (BAE) was founded by Act of Congress in 1878–79
to record and photograph America’s indigenous cul-
tures. As well as absorbing earlier photographs of
Native American peoples, such as those by the James
E.McClees Studio in Washington (1857–58), instruc-
tions were issued to photographers working for the BAE
on the photographic procedures of portrait and genre
studies. The fi rst offi cial photographer was John K. Hill-
ers whose photographs of the Pueblos of the southwest
(1879–82) combined scientifi c and aesthetic agendas.
Between 1879 and 1888 anthropologists of the BAE
were helped by professional photographers, such as
William Henry Jackson and Charles Milton Bell. How-
ever after the Kodak revolution of 1888 anthropologists
increasingly made their own photographs as part of fi eld-
work. Many of the great photographic documenters of
indigenous culture of the late nineteenth century worked
under the auspices the BAE at a time of profound change
for Native American communities: James Mooney pho-
tographed the Cherokee and the Ghost Dances of the
Plains (1890–91), Adam Clark Vroman and Victor and
Cosmos Mindeloff photographed in the Pueblos of the
southwest in the 1890s, the latter working with Frank
Cushing of the Smithsonian Institution.
While the primary function of BAE was scientifi c,
recording Native American cultured for posterity, there
were also strong governmental agendas in gathering
anthropological information, especially in the light of
western expansion and the Indian Wars of the 1860s. By
the late 1880s they had also become linked to national
policies of cultural assimilation. Photographs made for
anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher amongst Omaha for the
New Orleans Exposition “Indian Civilzation” exhibi-
tion in 1885, typify this approach. The representations
constructed cultural similarities, such as settlement and
nuclear families, rather than stressing differences.
As elsewhere, outside the BAE, the universities and
museums were also increasingly active in anthropology
and thus photography. Franz Boas, perhaps the single
most infl uential fi gure in the shaping of American an-
thropology, viewed photography as an important tool in
his work. He both photographed himself and employed
photographers, notably Oregon C. Hastings and George
Hunt, a Kwakiutl photographer, to make images for him
of, for instance, the Kwakiutl potlatches and Winter Cer-
emony from the mid-1890s on. Boa’s cultural relativist
view, which saw cultures as integrated wholes rather
than a succession of comparable phenomena within
an evolutionary framework, enlarged the potential for
anthropological fi eld photography.
Anthropological investigations encompassed not
only other races but marginal groups at home: peasants,
working class and internal indigenous groups whose
culture was perceived as departing from an assumed
norm. A wide range of material, from Knut Knudssen’s
photographs of the Sami of northern Scandinavia to
Thomson’s Street Life of London (1878), might be seen
as infl ected with anthropological ideas. While some
were concerned with issues of class and criminality,
others, through anthropology’s study of culture and
origin, were related to emerging national identities.
Many European countries systematically documented
their peasant cultures—France, especially in Brittany,
Germany, Spain and Hungary. For instance, I.K. Inha’s
Land of the Kalavala (1890s) visualised the source of
Finland’s national epic, or indeed Sir Benjamin Stone,
whose photographs constituted a cultural archive of an
English past.
While many photographs were taken with anthropo-
logical intent throughout the colonised world, equally
important were the huge numbers photographs of
‘anthropological interest’ made outside science, which
became absorbed into anthropology. In France, Broca
recommended those with scientifi c interests to purchase
photographs of anthropological interest in the countries
they visited. The learned societies, museums and uni-
versities who collected anthropological photographs
provided a forum for the debate, viewing, collection and
classifi cation. Some were active in the dissemination of
images amongst those with anthropological interests,
such as the Berliner Gesellsachaft für Anthropologie,
Ethnologie und Urgeschichte’s project with Hamburg
photographer Carl Dammann. This applied equally to
internal ethnographies, for instance the ‘Racial’ Albums
of the BAAS, which collected and classifi ed carte de
visite ‘types’ from all over the British Isles, from High-
landers to Suffolk fl intknappers.
The large numbers of such photographs collected by
scientists testifi es to the anthropological importance at-
tached to them. Cultural subjects by photographers such
as J.W. Lindt, Kerry’s Studios, J.W Beattie in Australia;
Josiah Martin in New Zealand; Dufty Brothers, Burton
Brothers, Thomas Andrew in the Pacifi c, Marc Ferrez
in Brazil; Frank Rinehart and George B. Wittick in the
U.S.; C. Kroehle in Peru, Lloyd & Co. or Middlebrook