Portret van een onbekende man uit Bhutan before 1868

This photograph of an unknown Bhutanese man was taken by Benjamin Simpson sometime in the late nineteenth century, as photography was transforming visual culture. Simpson was a British doctor in the Indian Medical Service, and the picture is mounted in an album of similar portraits. The image creates meaning through visual codes of ethnographic photography popular at the time. Consider how specific features of that culture, such as geography, religion, historical events, social class, political movements, or economic structures might have influenced the artwork. These kinds of formal studio portraits were often commissioned by colonial administrations as a means of recording racial types and solidifying social hierarchies. It comments on the social structures of its own time as it presents the man as an object of scientific study. As historians, we have to question what kind of cultural biases might have shaped the photographer’s view. To understand this image better, we need to look into records of the British administration in India, to consider how photography was used as a tool of colonial governance.