Burma, circa 1885

by Adolphe Philip Klier

The German photographer Adolphe Philip Klier lived and worked in Burma (presently called Myanmar) for several decades. He was well known for offering a vast collection of Burmese landscapes and portraits which he sold out of his studio in Rangoon (currently Yagon). The portrait presented here, of a young boy covered in tattoos, was presumably taken under the pretext of documenting a cultural phenomenon - body art - that was little known to westerns at the end of the 19th century, but there is also a sensuality in the portrait that gives the image a completely different dimension.