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Modern anthropology developed alongside photography in the second half of the 19th century, and the inhabitants, as well as the architectural remains in colonized lands, became a focus of interest to scientists, governments, and colonial administrators. Commercial photographers such as Felice Beato in Japan in the 1860s, the brief partnership of William Johnson and William Henderson in Bombay in the late 1850s, and the firm of W.L.H. Skeen in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), all operated photographic studios to serve the varied interests of the colonial residents through landscapes, portraiture, and ethnographic studies.
Unlike Roger Fenton’s subtly charged psychological portrait of General Sir J. Burgoyne, (on the facing wall), none of the photographs in this section was meant to examine the individuality of the sitter. Rather, they were intended to be the typical representatives of an ethnographic group (or type) of people. Whether acquired as exotic curiosities, travel souvenirs, or anthropological evidence, the images were understood at the time to provide credibility to the European’s notion of cultural superiority within the ideological framework of Orientalism. |
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