The black sun of the Nilgiris: Astronomy, photography and physical anthropology in South India

Abstract

This article examines how photographs showing Nilgiri people were brought back to France and deposited at the Museum national d'histoire naturelle in 1872. This leads me to recall the circumstances of a scientific mission made by the French astronomer Jules Janssen in South India in 1871. The paper throws light on the sources and on the personal experience of his wife, who published an ethnographic article in 1882. The importance of photography in the activities and achievements of Jules Janssen was well known. However the snapshots he brought back are better appraised in the context of the beginnings of photography and the development of its practice in British India. This case also illustrates the relations between photography and physical anthropology.

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