Nicolas Peterson, in his essay; Early 20th Century Photography of Australian Aboriginal Families Illustration or Evidence? Informs us that in the late 19th century the ability to reproduce photographic images on a large scale, reduced the cost of these images making them economically affordable and accessible to a larger audience. This lead to a boom in pictorial postcards depicting native cultures.  Peterson argues that this anthropology photography held a dual purpose, one as evidence of culture the other as mere illustration. In order for the Victorian public to place these photographs within a context of their cultural understanding, most photographs were reconstructed to convey Victorian ideas of sex, gender, family and race.  The Aboriginal concept of family differed from those of European cultures, which gives weight to Peterson argument of photography as illustration.   The subjects have been taken out of their cultural context to fit a Victorian idea of family.  The family portrait.

     These last two portraits in my view can be looked upon as both illustration and evidence because they convey what Elizabeth Edwards believed to be the power of ethnographic photography; "Photography can communicate about culture, people's lives, experiences and beliefs, not at the level of surface description but as a visual metaphor which bridges that space between the visible and invisible, which communicates not through the realist paradigm but through a lyrical expressiveness".

     This photograph was so popular, that it was copyrighted.  Could its popularity be based on the Victorian male gaze?