Photographie, Ethnographie und physische Anthropologie im 19. Jahrhundert: Ein Überblick für den deutschen Sprachraum

Abstract

In the German-speaking world, attempts were made to document Man's bodily and cultural manifestations by means of photographs. Photography thus became a medium for making visual inventories, its impact being larger in physical anthropology than in ethnography. Of the steps taken to establish a morphological typology, that of Johann Goethe, a questionable conceptual systematization, prevailed over other empirically-based models. Late in the 19th century, the idea of a Photographic Museum of the Human Races lay behind the ever more frequent scientific application of photography to illustrations in compilations of a general character and to representations of whole ethnic groups. Technical innovations promoted initiatives aimed to overcome the static photography of the day.