Gustav Fritsch: Travel writing and portrait photography in South Africa

Gustav Theodor Fritsch (5 March 1838 - 12 June 1927) was a German anatomist, anthropologist, traveler and physiologist from Cottbus. Fritsch studied natural science and medicine in Berlin, Breslou and Heidelberg and later became an associate professor of physiology at the University of Berlin, He was later appointed the head of the histological department at the physiological institute of the University of Berlin.

While being well known for his work with neuropsychiatrist Eduard Hitzig (1839 -1907), involving the localisation of the motor areas of the brain, he also did extensive ethnographical research in Southern Africa (1863-1866). His travel writing and portrait photography, and how they are presented, is interesting as his methodology shifts from ethnographic-cultural to anthropological-physical. This change in methodology causes his portraits to shift in meaning as well. This shift in portraiture meaning can also be seen as moving from the "honorific" to the "repressive" representation of the focus of his photographs, with the focus of photographs being the indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa.

Fritsch's portrait photographs of, "Natives of South Africa", were taken between 1863 and 1866 and was published  in reconstituted form in 1872. His initial portraits and travel narrative were "honorific" in nature and their open-ended ethnographic emphasis related to an early racial liberalism. His portrait photography and narrative writing, shifted to the "repressive", emphasising the physical features which would constitute the 'racial types' in Southern Africa. The shift in the meaning and representation in his work is quite sudden, moving from cultural to physical within the span of a decade.

The reason for the sudden change in his approach to documenting the indigenous inhabitants of Southern Africa lies within the context of his academic pursuits and the newly established
Berlin  anthropological community within which he finds himself. More specifically, it is the integration within a newly institutionalised Germany, and particularly within the Berlin anthropological community, that his movement towards a new methodology within this intellectual context, causes him to move from an ethnographic-cultural to an anthropological-physical methodology.          

For further reading on Gustav Fritsch, his travel writing and portrait photographs of the individuals in his, "Natives of South Africa", the following link is quite helpful:                                                           http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/journal_archive/02590190/670.pdf