[Studio Portrait of Woman Wearing Head Scarf, Shawl, and Plaid Skirt, Brazil]

Unknown

1861–62 · Salted paper print from glass negative, with applied color · Photographs

This poignant studio portrait is one of a group of portraits that date from 1861–62 and are by an unknown maker. Made more than twenty five years before the end of slavery (1888) in Brazil – the last country in the Western world to abolish it – the portraits likely depict enslaved and indigenous women in the states of Pernambuco and Bahia. Several have applied color added to the garments worn by the subjects. All nineteen are on paper mounts, most with later annotations in ink, likely in the hand of the Swiss German photographer and collector Hermann Kummler who traveled extensively in Brazil from 1888 to 1891.

Artist

Unknown

Date

1861–62

Medium

Salted paper print from glass negative, with applied color

Department

Photographs

Credit line

The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2018