The Body of Black Women in Brazil in the Context of Racial Representation

This paper aims to discuss standards of racial representation of the body of black women within the context of mid-nineteenth century Brazil. The paper opens with an analysis of the racial photographs assembled by Louis Agassiz during the Thayer Expedition to Brazil in 1865-66. The collection includes two very different photographic series, the first focusing on "pure races" and the second on "mixed races". The "pure race" series includes portraits and somatological studies of African women, both slave and free, while the second portrays women of mixed races residents of Manaus. The paper analysis the photographical trypitic of Ignez Mina, to show how, in the case of black women body representation, neutrality of racial standarts representation were easily blowed by assumptions of the supposed sensuality and sexuality of the women of African descendent and of the mixed races. The paper then scrutinizes the images comissioned by Agassiz in comparison with the descriptions and measurements collected by Hermann Burmeister in Brazil and published in English in 1853 about women of African descendency and of mixed races.  The aim is to show how patterns of Greek beauty and symmetry were deeply ingrained in racial representation specially in the case of women.