American Archives. Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture.

[some citations fromt he introduction: .. This book proposes that
photographic archives (like August Sander's catalogue of facial types) did
indeed change the ways in which Americans viewed themselves and others
throughout the century predating Benjamin's refelections, and it suggests
that these 19th century archives were anything but revolutionary (in
Benjamin's sense of the term). In fact, this book studies the convergence
of scientific and commercial photography in the constitution and
transformation of middle-class identities in the 19th century. The
"scientific" catalogue of facial types that Benjamin celebrates had
ominous precursors in the 19th century archives of criminologists,
biological racialists, and eugenicists. By examing such archives, this
study problematizes Benjamin's faith in physiognomy and demonstrates that
the "types" on which Benjamin sought to ground a new social order were
just as constructed as (and at leat as pernicious as) the class structures
he hoped to dismantle. This book argues that a catalogue of "essential"
facial types was integral to the production of a racialized middle-class
identity over the course of the 19th century.]