Photographic “types”: The pursuit of method

Abstract

This paper is a preliminary examination of one of the ways in which anthropologists attempted to apply photography systematically within the growing body of anthropological method during the 1860s and early 1870s. It concentrates on the “type” photograph, the main purpose of which was to illustrate the characteristics of a racial group. However, a wide variety of material was categorized as “types” of anthropological interest, for the term was more widely used than in a strictly biological context. Anthropologists were nonetheless anxious to improve the quality of their scientific data. The paper examines the role of photography in this context, looking first at the broader framework and then more specifically at two nineteenth century projects, one from England, the other from Germany, which might be described as the “incunabula of visual anthropology”.