| | | Prince Roland Bonaparte's ethnographic expedition to Lapland
(1884)
An aristocratic relation of Napoleon, Prince Roland Bonaparte (1858-1924) took a 19th century gentleman‘s interest in the sciences and in particular, during the earlier part of his life, in the study of anthropology. Like others of the period, he looked on photography as a scientific tool for preserving data from his expeditions, and used it to document the Amerindians, Surinames, Hottentots and other unusual peoples brought to European exhibitions.
In 1884 Bonaparte organized an ethnographic expedition to Lapland, an artic region in northern Europe, which described by F. Escard in an 1886 monograph Le Prince Roland Bonaparte in Laponie. A portfolio of collotypes Lapons (Laplanders) was also issued from the negatives taken during the trip by "the Prince‘s usual photographer" (Escard 1886, viii). The collotype plates, which are quite uncommon, document each sitter in paired frontal / profile views reminiscent of modern criminal mugshots. The images measure 6 x 4.5 inches (15x12 cm), printed on sheets 12 x 17 inches (30x44 cm).
Bonaparte‘s work is grounded in the anthropology of his time, which focussed on the documentation of physical characteristics, and in particular on shape and dimensions of the skull as a means of establishing relations between the human races. This tack had been given to European anthropology by its pioneers earlier in the century, notably Paul Broca, whose thinking was informed by the discovery of the first fragments of early man and whose standard field guide for anthropologists involved a complex series of physical measurements. The hard scientific results of Bonaparte‘s expedition were thus conclusions of the sort that Laplanders were "brachycephalic," had little facial hair, and possessed a "mean nasal index of 74.59 for the men, 73.64 for the women" (Escard 1886, xiii). This attitude is clear in Bonaparte‘s images, yet paradoxically the sitters role as human specimens, accentuated further by the numbered cards held next to each on a short stick, allows them a status and often a dignity which would be lacking in more commonplace photography.
Further reading
Escard, F., Le Prince Roland Bonaparte in Laponie: Episodes et Tableaux. Paris, G. Chamerot, 1886.
© Christopher Wahren (2006) - Used with permission
Enter | |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint