[Elderly Man, Spain]

Alphonse Delaunay French

Not on view

This study forms part of a larger body of work—of so-called Spanish “types”—which Alphonse Delaunay made between 1851 and 1854. The artist gathered people of various ages and diverse occupations, including this elderly man, to record a broad array of nineteenth-century Spanish life. The impulse to photographically document and classify physiologies and social appearances was inevitably entwined with imperialism, surveillance, and racial stereotyping, but the improvisational quality of Delaunay’s photographs (especially some of the deliberate, awkward poses) suggests that they initially were intended as source material for artists.

[Elderly Man, Spain], Alphonse Delaunay (French, 1827–1906), Albumen silver print from paper negative

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