Description:The image above is taken from Benjamin's Stone's album entitled ‘Types and Races of Mankind’ (Album 50, 1870-83). It vividly shows how nineteenth century photographers often tended to classify people from other counties according to social hierarchy, physical appearances and national background, rather than from a sense of respect for individual identity. Such representations also reflect the ideas of Charles Darwin, who suggested that societies might be biologically determined and had evolved through a process which he famously termed ‘natural selection’.
One critic has argued that the use of science to provide a fixed idea of race ‘rendered it culturally impossible for images of non-European peoples to be viewed other than in broad ethnographic terms, as generalised culture rather than historically-specific people’*. In such albums like ‘Types and Races of Mankind’, where Stone can be seen trying to find a way of classifying other races, landscapes and customs, it would be extremely hard to escape the fact that his images present certain cultures or classes as inferior and others as superior or civilised. Likewise, the text found in the Caddick dairies is also capable of showing both great perception and great ignorance of other cultures.
As a consequence of this hierarchical way of looking at others, the captions of some of Stone’s photographs (as with the text of Caddick’s diaries) are one of the biggest hurdles for contemporary viewers of his collection. In many cases, instead of giving names of those photographed, the only caption that appears ‘native’, ‘coolies’, ‘servants’, or ‘mulattos’. Such captions may justifiably be found insulting and derogatory. But, ultimately, it may be more important that we learn from these these misrepresentations and continue to critique the powerful and highly restrictive nineteenth century colonial desire to classify people strictly according to race, religion, and class.
The Stone and Caddick collections of photographs exist as a perpetual contradiction. They are a towering legacy to the emerging power of documentary photography and the strenuous efforts of nineteenth century collectors whose epic travels gathered evidence of worlds beyond Birmingham. At the same time, they mirror the colonial attitudes of their owners towards other cultures, revealing visual perspectives confined by limited racial thinking. Ultimately, every person will have their own interpretation of their photographs, which raise more questions than answers. They are not only monuments to a vanished past but insights into ideas about travel, race and identity which affect our understanding of one another today.
*Edwards, Elizabeth and Roberts, Russell (Eds.) In Visible Light: Photography and Classification in Art, Science and The Everyday. (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art Oxford: 1997) p63