Untitled (West Indian Women Being Measured) (c. 1860s): Art, History and Details

Untitled (West Indian Women Being Measured) (c. 1860s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The eerie depictions of three ages of West Indian women of African descent are early examples of photography’s use by nineteenth-century anthropologists to categorize different ethnic and racial types within the human race. These images were almost certainly taken by a European or Caucasian photographer during a time of colonial occupation.

Object facts

• Title: Untitled (West Indian Women Being Measured)
• Date: c. 1860s
• Culture: Caribbean, 19th century
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: three studies mounted on a single card
• Dimensions: Image 1: 8.6 x 5.2 cm (3 3/8 x 2 1/16 in.); Image 2: 8.6 x 5.2 cm (3 3/8 x 2 1/16 in.); Image 3: 8.5 x 5.2 cm (3 3/8 x 2 1/16 in.)
• Collection: PH - Misc. 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2019.70

A detail from the museum

The tension in the sitters’ body language and expressions suggest that posing here was not a choice or a pleasurable experience.

Collection credit

Gift of Barbara Tannenbaum and Mark Soppeland

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.