502
surroundings. Venturesome Europeans had in North
Africa and the Middle East a place to visit, particularly
after the opening of the Suez Canal, and photography
was a particular resource for these travellers; monuments
might be the main focus of these amateur photographers,
but local people were also an important subject.
Commercial photography had a fast growth in mid
eastern societies; one of the best known studios was
the Bonfi ls family in Beirut, which, by 1876 had a
mail order catalogue with views of places and people
to supplement their portrait studio revenues. The part of
revenue generated by these views seemed to be greater
than in other places of the world, as there was a good
market for them.
Anthropometric photography did also take place,
even if it was less common than in Africa, India or other
parts of Asia. Ernest Chantre published his Recherches
Anthropologiques dans l’Afrique Orientale: Egypte, in
1904, based on comparing almost a thousand of modern
Egyptian photographs, taken in 1898 and 1899, with
measurements made from mummies. The main diffi culty
was in photographing women, which unfortunately, for
anthropometrics, but fortunately for ethnographers, are
sometimes photographed wearing their usual face and
head covering.
Handheld Kodak cameras in the hand of tourists,
or amateur explorers were of more importance in the
Middle East then in other farther away places, so much
of ethnographic photographs from 1890 on are the
product of such amateurs.
Adrien Bonfi ls, second in the already mentioned Bon-
fi ls family generation, wrote that after twenty centuries
Palestine was unchanged. That view of the Middle East
as an unchanged land, living in a sort of a time warp, is
refl ected in images of romantic nostalgia. Ethnographic
photography here was not in the quest of the unknown,
but of the biblical past.
India and the Far East were by their resources in the
view of European powers. India was already the jewel in
the crown of the British Empire, however its multitude
of powers and different people was of great concern to
British rulers. The People of India was one of the most
ambitious of all photographic surveys of racial types,
resulting in 8 volumes of almost 500 photographs each,
was started as a collection for Lord Canning, India’s
Governor-General, from 1856–58. However after the
Indian rebellion in 1857, it became an offi cial project
for the Political and Secret Department of the India Of-
fi ce, showing the close connections of science and sur-
veillance. John Bourne photographed northern India’s
landscape and people, being his Indian rulers picture
series very popular as a souvenir for British offi cers
returning home. In fact local rulers were a major focus
for ethnographic photography.
A commercial photographer working in the FarEast, John Thomson experienced the magic powers
of photography, as felt by the other. He describes how
his camera was perceived like a magical thing, and
himself like some kind of necromancer. Some of his
photographs, and his latter description of a systematized
methodology for race type photography would detach
his images from ethnography, however he also photo-
graphed people engaged in their activities. His images,
and accompanying words do also provide negative
moral judgments, which were needed as China could
hardly be described as an inferior civilization, so the
burden of cataloging Chinese as inferior to Euro Ameri-
cans would have to be put on vice and moral inferiority.
China had been opened to Europeans after the mid-19th
century Opium Wars, and Felice Beato was one the fi rst
and better-known European photographers working in
the Far East; China and, since 1862, Japan, where he
made his famous photographs, mostly studio portraits,
of Japanese society.
European photographers pursued the same sort of
“exotic” type photography, they were making in other
continents, in southern Europe. Local people, costumes
and habits were in focus the same way landscapes
and monuments were. The photographs of English
photographer C. Clifford and French photographer J.
Laurent in mid-19th century Iberia set the standard for
photographs of that nature. By the same time Thomas
Annan was commissioned by Glasgow City authorities
to photograph the city slums before a major renewal, his
photographs were mainly of buildings, however some
showed their inhabitants. Russian and other Eastern
European photographers focuser on their far north or
Asian type population. Photographers of the same coun-
try produced images of rural and even urban types in
Europe, even if they were higher in the hierarchy of races
and types. Countries would have their own regional and
professional popular types hierarchy, fi shermen might
have a “higher” position than peasants; some regions,
particularly the southern part of Mediterranean countries
had a lower position within those countries. Western
countries were in the process of industrialization, the
rural society was decaying. Like in the images of people
recently discovered by “civilization” this entire world
was being photographed before it would disappear
under the wells of progress. As a matter of fact some
had already disappeared and was being recreated just
for the picture.
As nationalism emerged as the main political ideol-
ogy, there was a need to create elements of national,
and even of local identifi cation, what E.J. Hobsbawm
calls the “Invention of Tradition.” Photography played
a major role in this; local habits and costumes, real and
not so real were the subject of countless photographs
from a countless numbers of amateur and professional
photographers. Every European country had his majorETHNOGRAPHY
Hannavy_RT72353_C005.indd 502 7/5/2007 11:18:31 AM