Negro de frente, de perfil e de costas

Rio de Janeiro, 1865. Albumen 21 x 28 cm. [Picture from a series of physiological studies Stahl took on request from Louis Agassiz, who was traveling Brazil at the head of the Thayer expedition (named after its sponsor, a US philanthropist), whose principal objective of was the study of fish from the Amazonian and São Francisco basins. Agassiz published an account of the journey, co-scripted with his wife, Elizabeth Carey, which was illustrated with several lithographies reproducing photographs by Stahl (cf. A Journey in Brasil, by Prof. and Mrs. Louis Agassiz. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1868). Among these were four portraits of female slaves and two views of Rio de Janeiro's botanical garden. Also on request from Agassiz, Stahl took a series of photographs of blacks and Chinese immigrants, all of which repeated the standardized front, profile and rear view common to physiological photography of the time. None of these images were included in the book on Brazil, but rather seemed to have been taken for a forthcoming typologies of the races in his travel book, such as this characterization of blacks: 'of long arms, the Negroes are generally slim; they have long legs and a relatively short torso; the shoulder blades are long and stand close to one another, the black is slightly wrinkled and slender; the hands disproportionally slim, with the interdigital furrows more prolonged than in any other race'. / Illustration taken from Bla Corrêa do Lago, 'Augusto Stahl, obra completa em Pernambuco e Rio de Janeiro', Rio de Janeiro: Capivara, 2001