Photograph of unidentified woman wearing French Antillean dress: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Photograph of a woman wearing a traditional Creole chemise jupe ensemble leaning on a column in a studio. She is facing directly forward and has one arm placed on the column and the other holding her hip under her skirt. She is wearing a white blouse with a patterned foulard scarf tucked into her full-length, dark, floral-patterned skirt or jupe. She is wearing a madras head scarf with large ornamentation. She also wears traditional jewelry such as the gold collier-choux necklace and large earrings. The photograph has a white border surrounding the image. The back is blank but has handwritten text in the upper left quadrant [531582].

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1860-1880
• Photograph by: Unidentified
• Subject of: Unidentified Woman or Women
• Type: photographs
• Type: portraits
• Medium: silver and photographic gelatin on photographic paper
• Dimensions: H x W: 4 1/8 × 2 1/2 in. (10.5 × 6.4 cm)
• Place captured: Caribbean, Latin America, North and Central America
• Cultural Place: France, Europe
• Cultural Place: Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, Asia
• Topic: African American
• Topic: African diaspora
• Topic: Clothing and dress
• Topic: Colonialism
• Topic: Fashion
• Topic: Freedom
• Topic: French colonialism
• Topic: Gender
• Object number: 2016.151.3
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The displayed image also has an explicit CC0 designation. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public Domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.