Framing the ‘delegated gaze’: handbooks for travellers and the making of anthropological photography in Italy at the end of the nineteenth century

This article analyzes the role that observations had in anthropological practice at the end of the 19th century and considers how Italian anthropology at its origin framed it through textual discourses, handbooks and instructions produced at the end of the 19th century. In these sources we can detect the attempt to guide the gaze of travelers and observers on the spot, in order to ensure the reliability of the information received and, consequently, of the making of science. The investigation connects the practice of observation with photography, to see which form of representation were promoted and how the medium was associated with the anthropological discipline. In particular, the demand for “scientific” and “artistic” photographs is analysed as a distinction strongly connected to the way anthropology conceived itself.