Kusakabe Kimbei

In the 1800s, stereotypical images of exoticized peoples were commonly created by both foreign and domestic photography studios for consumption by Western tourist audiences.

After purchasing the negatives of two European photographers, the Japanese photographer Kimbei printed their images of sumo wrestlers and geisha as well as his own. This hybrid cultural narrative makes it impossible to determine whether his photographs are self-representation or “othering” by an artist from a different culture. Jean Pascal Sébah’s photograph of British soldiers in Egypt is similarly complicated. Sébah, a Turkish photographer of Syrian Armenian descent, sold individual portraits, “types,” and local scenes to both Ottoman and European customers.

German photographer August Sander turned a typological lens on his own country by photographing “people of the 20th century.” His nearly 600 portraits placed his subjects firmly within a larger context by identifying them only by occupation and economic class. The Nazis terminated his project because it contradicted their racial categorizations.