Photograph by C.W. Dammann, 'Racial Types of India' from Anthropological and Ethnologies Album of Asia, 1873, Germany.

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.

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.

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.

75038