Fighting and gender scenes

About this work

This photo shows two men wrestling in a cluttered room. Their clothes are rumpled, boots kicked aside. A chair lies tipped over near a small table. It was taken in 1801. That’s early for photos—most history books start photography in the 1830s. The blur around the men’s arms suggests the camera needed a long exposure. Someone kept it in a Belgian museum collection for over 200 years. If you like gritty early photos, check out the Museum of Ethnography.