Untitled (West Indian Women Being Measured)
1864
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1864
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Untitled (West Indian Women Being Measured) is a 1864 by Unknown, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Three Black women stand in a bare room, their bodies turned so a white official can measure them with calipers. One is a child, one a young adult, one elderly. These photos weren’t made for art. European scientists used early cameras to sort people into racial types during colonial rule. The women’s faces show no expression, but the act of measuring turns their bodies into data. To see more images like this, look up the subject: caribbean, 19th century.
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.
The tension in the sitters’ body language and expressions suggest that posing here was not a choice or a pleasurable experience.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Your cart is empty
Explore artworks →
