Racial Types of India
Photograph
1874 (made)
1874 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
Eight photographic studies depicting ethnic variations in India and Burma. Individual images are based on a frontal portrait and profile of a fully clothed woman wearing a short sleeved blouse and sari, and a Bayadere woman from the Coromandel coast. An anthropometric study depicting a full length, naked portrait and profile of a male from the Coromandel coast and a Burmese male with his hair tied in a bun.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Racial Types of India (generic title) |
| Materials and techniques | Albumen prints made from collodion negatives |
| Brief description | Photograph by C.W. Dammann, 'Racial Types of India' from Anthropological and Ethnologies Album of Asia, 1873, Germany. |
| Physical description | Eight photographic studies depicting ethnic variations in India and Burma. Individual images are based on a frontal portrait and profile of a fully clothed woman wearing a short sleeved blouse and sari, and a Bayadere woman from the Coromandel coast. An anthropometric study depicting a full length, naked portrait and profile of a male from the Coromandel coast and a Burmese male with his hair tied in a bun. |
| Dimensions |
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| Style | |
| Gallery label | Gallery 100, 2016-17:
Carl Victor Dammann (1819–74) and
Friedrich Wilhelm Dammann (1834–94)
‘Racial Types of India’
1873–74
This photograph is from a portfolio of prints produced
in Germany and later released with the English title
Ethnological Photographic Gallery of the Various Races
of Man. The portfolio was one of the earliest and most
comprehensive projects of photographic ethnology.
It aimed to document the physical characteristics of
different peoples, and included images from a number
of cultures that had never been photographed before.
Albumen print
Museum no. 75038 |
| Object history | This photographic project was initiated by the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnography and pre-history in 1870. Damman was commisioned to photograph in a way that was useful to scientific study, even though his material was not sourced by direct contact, but through copying small picture post cards or Carte De Visite. The two photographs of the man with his hair tied back were taken by Fedor Jagor. Copies of these photographs are in the possession of the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. |
| Historical context | The Anthropological and Ethnologies Album contained a series of photographs on fifty separate sheets comprising of various ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe. The album was awarded a Bronze medal for its scientific interest in the Vienna International Exhibition of 1873, and printed in London ca. 1875. |
| Subject depicted | |
| Bibliographic reference | Edwards, E (1982) 'Some Problems with Photographic Archives: The Case of C. W. Damman', Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, Vol.13, No 3, p257-361. |
| Collection | |
| Accession number | 75038 |
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| Record created | May 27, 2003 |
| Record URL |
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