53
Studios in Southern Africa; Bonfi ls’ and Zangaki’s
Studios in North Africa and Middle East, Felice Beato
in Burma and Japan—found their way into scientifi c
collections in a research resource. Such photographs
occupied the cusp between the popular and the scientifi c
and photographers marketed their work, some times
aggressively, in both markets. In many cases, the an-
thropological legitimated popular images of the exotic
and erotic. Such photographic productions are found,
repeated through many major collections, suggesting
the global scale of the circulation of ‘anthropological
photographs’.
By the end of the century a clear break emerged
between the amateur and antiquarian and the profes-
sionally trained university or research institute-based
anthropologist who combined fi eld study with clear
theoretical analysis. This development was, in general
terms, common to the various anthropological traditions
and was refl ected in the way in which photography was
both produced and used in anthropology. The anthropo-
logical validity of commercially produced photographs
of “native types” and scenes declined. Increasing stress
was laid on photographs which resulted from direct
scientifi c observation. Linked to this were shifts in
photographic style from the controlled scientifi c speci-
men and its popular derivatives to a more naturalistic
approach. These were exemplifi ed by two papers which
appeared in the pages of the British Journal of the An-
thropological Institute. In 1893 Everard im Thurn (who
photographed extensively in British Guiana from the
late 1870s–90s) advocated the anthropological value
for photographs of people in their natural conditions
made from direct observation. A different view was
presented in 1896 by M.V. Portman He advocated the
arrangement of ‘culture’ within the photographic frame
as visual answers to the questions in Notes and Queries,
the approach he had used in his studies of Andaman
Islanders. By the 1890s unmediated naturalism was
becoming the dominant truth value in anthropological
photography. In many ways these concerns resonate with
debates concerning naturalism and intervention within
the wider photographic community.
In photographic terms this was aided by increasing
technical ease, although anthropologists tended to use
well-built cameras and glass plates until well into the
twentieth century because of the instability of fi lm
negatives in tropical climates. However, the possibilities
for ‘action’ photographs by the 1890s accorded with
emerging ideas of scientifi c truth premised on direct
observation. This is demonstrated in the work of the
BAE, for instance Matilda Coxe Stevenson, working
with BAE stenographer May Clark, used a Box Brownie
extensively at Zuni in 1891, producing snapshots of
everyday life. material culture and ritual. The interdis-
ciplinary university or museum-based expeditions with
large photographic outputs became an important aspects
of anthropology at this period, especially in the German
and America traditions. The 1897 Jesup North Pacifi c
Expedition, under Boas, used photography to record
a whole range of daily and ritual behaviours, some of
which were specially re-enacted for the camera and as
was often the case with expeditions, photography was
integral to the collecting of material culture for museums
as well as the social description of indigenous peoples.
The Second Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits
of 1898, under A.C. Haddon, is especially important
because of the centrality of the visual to its interests.
As well as exposing over 500 photographic plates, they
took fi rst anthropological fi lm to be made in the fi eld
and had hoped to experiment with colour photography
using the Ives and Joly process (which fell victim to the
travelling conditions and the tropical climate).
Increasingly, the dominant way of working in the
early twentieth century, was that of the work of indi-
vidual fi eldworker. For instance, Baldwin Spencer and
Frank Gillen produced photographs as a result of long
acquaintance with the Aboriginal peoples of Central and
Northern Australia from 1894 on, and the German Fritz
Sarasin worked in with Veddah people of Ceylon (Sri
Lanka), recording everyday culture in the 1890s. The
emphasis in all these examples, and other contemporaryVroman, Adam Clark. Lah Poh.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © The J. Paul Getty
Museum.