Ch.5: Science and Social Science

James Robertson, Felice Beato, Balaclava Harbor, 1855

Felice Beato, Interior of the Secundrabaugh After Slaughter of 2,000 Rebels, Luknow 1858

John Murray, Panorama of the West Face of theTaj Mahal, 1850-60s.

Felice Beato, Interior of the Angle of North Fort at Taku , 1860.

Beato, Execution of the Mutineers in the Indian Mutiny, 1857.

Beato’s pictures were the first to show the horrific side of war to the British public.

Beato, Woman Using Cosmetics, 1867. Albumen print with applied color.

Milton M. Miller, Cantonese Mandarin and his Wife, 1861.

• In the later 19th Century, using photography to compare and contrast races of people was a prominent practice.

• Theories about the multiple origins of human beings persisted, despite Charles Darwin’s theory that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry - theory of evolution.

J.T. Zealy, Jack, commissioned by Louis Agassiz, 1850s

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Throughout the 1860s and 1870s, ethnographic studies and exhibitons were very popular.

Unknown, A Coat Couple from the Valley of the Serezan near Zagreb, 1867

Unknown, Brinjara and Wife, from The People of India, 1868

• Scientists Thomas Henry Huxley and John Lamprey wanted to create a standardized method by which people could be photographed for observation / comparison.

• They said the scientific study of race should be based on observations of the nude human body, so that differences in skin color, hair texture, physique, ect, could be recorded.

• This method reinforced the belief that there were basic human differences among the races which could be seen through distinctions in physical appearance.

John Lamprey, Front and Profile Views of a Malayan Male, c.1868-69

• A persistent type of ethnographic photography showed women from the Middle East and Asia in sexually suggestive poses.

• The term “orientalism” was first adopted in a book written in 1978 by cultural critic Edward Said.

• A central idea of orientalism is that Western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived archetypes. For example, the labeling of non-Western people as passive, not active, child-like rather than mature, feminine, rather than masculine and timeless - separate from the progress of Western history.

More specifically, it describes the sexual interest or intrusive observation of people from non-Western cultures, especially women.

Unknown, Arab Woman and Turkish Woman, Zangaki, Port Said, 1870-80

Ingrés, Odalisque, 1838

A common theme in art, the odalisque was a slave or concubine in a harem, usually seen as a reclining due or semi-nude woman.

John Frederick Lewis, Women in their Quarters, 1873

Haraam (Arabic) translates as something/someone that is forbidden.

• Harams originated in the late 15th C. with the Sultan (Monarch) in Turkey.

• In Western literature, Middle Eastern women were seen as sexually suggestive, kept in harams, wearing veils.

• Another type of ethnographic photography had to do with the belief that indigenous peoples didn’t have the physical or mental strength to survive the encroachment of Western civilization.

• There was a desire to record what were seen as “vanishing civilizations.”

C.A. Woolley, Trucanini, 1866

John Hillers, Taos Pueblo, 1880

Hillers, Warriors, 1880

• As cities became more industrialized in the later 19th Century, many people were displaced by the renovation. They were seldom photographed. Pictures published in newspapers were of factories and industrial sites - and were meant to reflect private industry in a positive way.

• The fact that there was child labor, worker strikes, sanitation problems and overcrowded neighborhoods - was not addressed until much later.

Unknown, Before and After Photographs of Young Boys, c.1875, used by social reformist and philanthropist Thomas Barnardo to gain support for his

homs which offered training for poor and homeless children.

Thomas Annan, Close No. 37, High Street, 1868.

Considered to be the first to record the housing conditions of the poor.

Charles Marville, 14 Rue des Marmousets, ND.

Marville, Street Scene, ND.

John Thomson, the Cangue, from China and Its People, 1871-72.

Thomson, street scene, from China and Its People, 1871-72.

Thomson, from China and Its People, 1871-72.

Thomson, Sufferers from the Flood, from Street Life in London,1871-72.

“As for myself, I have never felt right since that awful night when, with my little girl, I sat above the water on my bed until the tide went down.”

Thomson, the Crawlers, from Street Life in London,1871-72.

“The Crawlers - old women reduced by vice and poverty to that degree of wretchedness whichdestroys even the energy to beg.”

Thomson, Second Hand Clothes, from Street Life in London,1871-72.

“As a rule, secondhand clothes shops are far from distinguished in their clenliness, and areoften the fruitful medium for the propagation of fever, smallpox and cholera.”

Thomson, Public Disinfectors, from Street Life in London,1871-72.

“They receive sixpence an hour for disinfecting houses and removing contaminated clothingand furniture, and these are such busy times that they often work twelve hours a day.”

Photographic Studies of Human Expression

Hugh Welch Diamond, Seated Woman With Bird, 1855.

The idea that human character could be interpreted through facial expressions persisted throughout 19th Century portraiture.

Hugh Welch Diamond, “the Father of Psychiatric Photography” stated there were 3 functions of photography in the treatment of the mentally ill.

• It could be used to record the appearance of patients with different psychiatric conditions. Theories concerning facial charateristics -physiognomy- of insanity were popular at the time.

• Photographs could also be used as a means of identification for readmission and treatment.

• Photography enabled the mentally ill to be given an accurate self - image, as an aid to treatment.

Diamond, Mental Patients, 1855.

Adrien Tournachon for Dr. Guillaume Duchenne de Boulgne, Electrical Contraction of the Face, between 1852-56

Dr. Guillaume Duchenne de Boulgne, from The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy, 1862.

Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872.

Oscar Rejlander, illustrations for The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Rejlander, illustrations for The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (Disgusted, Indignant, Sneering, Indignant)

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Rejlander, Plate 3 frp, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

(left) Terror Striken, after a photograph from Dr. Duchenne’s study (right).Electrical apparatus omitted.

Unknown, Attitudes Passionelles, plate 21 from Charcot’s Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriére Hospital, 1876.

Jphn Martin Charcot, neurologist and student of Dr. Duchenne.

Charcot presenting a patient to scientists.

Duchenne, Darwin and Charcot considered temselves to be neutral observers. Were they? Charcot’s studies on hysteria drew the attention of

Sigmund Fred (1885-1939), the “father of pyschoanlysis.”

“I stand here merely as a photographer. I write what I see.” (Charcot).

James Nasmeth & James Carpenter, Moon, Crater of Vesuvius,1864.

Nasmeth & Carpenter, Back of Hand, Wrinkled Appled,1864.

Interested in the univeral laws of nature (ie: the similarities between the hand and the apple).