Two South American men in ponchos

A black and white full-length studio portrait photograph of two South American men looking directly at the camera. They have shoulder-length hair and are wearing hats, ponchos and light-coloured unpatterned trousers. Both men are carrying bags slung over their left shoulders. The man on the left-hand side of the image is wearing a plain poncho with a raw hem and open-toed sandals. The man on the right-hand side is wearing a patterned poncho with thick, dark stripes and thinner, lighter stripes, and boots which appear to cover his ankles. Original caption (handwritten beneath the photograph): ‘South Americans’.

Ponchos are garments made from a single square or rectangular piece of fabric with a hole in the centre for the wearer’s head. They are worn across Central and South America, though it is not known exactly where they originate from. There are many regional variants and names, still worn by Indigenous communities today, across the Americas dating back to pre-Hispanic times.

Another copy of this photograph appears at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (2017.69.19), as a carte de visite from 1864-66 sold in a shop run by the Swiss photographer Georges Leuzinger.