Los 4096

Sumatra, Western
Ethnographic Studies of the Mentawai People

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Fotografie des 19. – 21. Jahrhunderts (Katalog nur online verfügbar)
Auktionsdatum 29.11.2025

Photographer: Christiaan Benjamin Nieuwenhuis (1863-1922). Ethnographic studies of the Mentawai People, Western Sumatra. Circa 1895-1905. 8 albumen prints, mounted to board. Each 22,2 x 16 cm (26,4 x 20 cm). Most annotated in pencil on the verso.

This group of photographs by Christiaan Benjamin Nieuwenhuis, taken circa 1895-1905, represents a rare and significant visual record of the Mentawai people of Western Sumatra at the turn of the 20th century. Produced during Nieuwenhuis’s service in the Dutch East Indies, the images reflect the colonial-era ambition to document and classify Indigenous cultures through photography. Beyond their ethnographic purpose, these photographs are among the earliest known visual representations of Mentawai society and thus form an important historical source for the study of material culture, body ornamentation, and pre-missionary lifeways in the Mentawai Islands. – Some light fading, scuff-marks and a few creases to one print, otherwise all in good to very good condition.