Lot 119: ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY. DAMMANN, CARL. 1819-1874, AND FREDERICK W. Eth

ETHNOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHY. DAMMANN, CARL. 1819-1874, AND FREDERICK W. Ethnological Photographic Gallery of the Various Races of Mankind. London: Trubner & Co., [1875]. Oblong folio (305 x 410 mm). 167 albumen prints mounted on 24 heavy card pages, with printed captions describing each race of people. Publisher’s gilt-titled green cloth. Wear and staining to cover, browning, tissue guard leaves chipped with some loose. FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. Carl Dammann was a photographer from Mecklenburg, who settled in Hamburg to practice his craft. In 1870 he was asked by the Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte (Society of Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory of Berlin) to photograph the African and Arab crewmen who had arrived in the port of Hamburg with a fleet from Zanzibar. He extended this study with photographs of members of a Japanese acrobatic troupe. The society then collected additional ethnographic photos from members around the world, and sent them to Dammann to select and gather into an album for publication. Carl Dammann died before he could see publication of the work in its original form in German, but his brother Frederick completed it and Anthropologischethnologisches Album in Photographien, was published in 1874, the year of Carl’s death. It contained 642 albumen photographs on 50 mounts, but one year later this smaller version was published in London with 167 photographs. Many of the images in the smaller version were new to this edition. The captions are highly subjective, and show a prejudicial European bias: There is but little to remind us of the Mongolian type in the countenances of the Hindoos, which are often remarkable for a symmetrical beauty that only wants a more intellectual expression to render them extremely striking. Despite the racial denigration contained in the text, the work offers a remarkable glimpse at faces of people from all corners of the globe during a bygone era.