Martinique: vues & types, 1870s-1880s

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Summary

Title:
Martinique: vues & types
Dates:
1870s-1880s
Abstract:
The album of 69 photographs taken by an unidentified photographer(s) contains views of Martinique and studio portraits of the island's inhabitants.
Extent:
1.5 Linear Feet (69 photographs in 1 album)
Language:
French .
Preferred citation:

Martinique: vues & types, 1870s-1880s, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 95.R.97.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa95r97

Background

Scope and content:

The album contains 69 albumen photographs of Martinique by an unidentified maker(s) including 24 large format and 25 carte-de-visite size views of Fort-de-France, Balata, St. Pierre, and environs; three large format portraits; and 17 carte-de-visite size studio portraits. One of the large photographs depicts a group of East Indian immigrants, likely recruited to the island as indentured laborers; the other two are studio portraits of a multiracial woman and a Congolese man respectively. Slavery was abolished in Martinique in 1848. Lacking a labor force French coffee and sugar planters first looked to coastal western Africa where they purchased enslaved persons, emancipated them, and then signed them into long-term contracts to work in Martinique. This practice was quickly viewed as enslavement in another guise, and the planters then looked to East India for laborers.

The album is half bound in dark red leather with pebbled boards. The title is debossed on the front cover.

Titles for most of the individual photographs are from the French captions written on the mounts below the images. Consequently, some of the language used to describe Black persons in the titles, such as négresses and mulâtresses (negro women and mulatto women), are now considered to be outdated, racist, or offensive. Fifteen of the carte-de-visite size portraits depict women of color. Grouped on two pages and collectively captioned as representing racial types, these images extend the 1860s and 1870s craze of collecting cartes-de-visite of one's friends, family, heads of state, and other celebrities to the collecting of exoticized and objectified unnamed women. Since the names of the sitters are unknown descriptive titles for their portraits were devised by the archivist.

Biographical / historical:

The album was likely produced by one of the early photographers working in Martinique.

Sources consulted:

Garcia, Claire Oberon. "My first visit to 'Le Pays des Revenants': Color, Caste, and Class in Martinque: Then and…?" https://sites.coloradocollege.edu/martinique/2011/07/21/79/

Northrup, David. "Indentured Indians in the French Antilles. Les immigrants indiens engagés aux Antilles françaises," Outre-Mers: Revue d'histoire, Année 2000: 245-271.

Acquisition information:
Acquired in 1995.
Processing information:

Beth Ann Guynn wrote the finding aid in 2021.

Arrangement:

Arranged in a single series: Series I. Martinique: vues & types, 1870s-1880s.

Physical location:
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Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

About this collection guide

Collection Guide Author:
Beth Ann Guynn
Date Encoded:
This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-05-14 13:52:03 -0700 .

Access and use

Terms of access:

Contact Library Reproductions and Permissions.

Preferred citation:

Martinique: vues & types, 1870s-1880s, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, Accession no. 95.R.97.

http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa95r97

Location of this collection:
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1688, US
Contact:
(310) 440-7390
Website