[Two Men Seated with an Oblong Basket, Spain]

A mix of artfully composed and seemingly impromptu arrangements, this group of fourteen figure studies represents a slice of mid-nineteenth-century Spanish life as interpreted by the French photographer Alphonse Delaunay. Although the costumes and occupational paraphernalia are not as legible today as they were to contemporary viewers, we still might identify a cooper, a dancer, a hunter, and several agricultural workers (possibly truffle gatherers) among the social types posed before Delaunay’s camera. The impulse to photographically document and classify physiologies and social appearances eventually became 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 were intended instead as source material for artists. The inclusion of a self-portrait (in the guise of the debonair suitor at the window of a lady) also dispels any purely documentary pretensions of the photographs.