The Ethnographer Who Never Was: Eulalia de Abaitua as a Lens on Fin-de-Siècle Basque Society

Abstract

Nineteenth-century Basque culture became a kind of ethnographic museum for anthropology, yet the nativism of its discourse ignored the industrial dimension of Basque society. This duality was captured, however, by the amateur photographer Eulalia Abaitua. She has been ignored by the canon due to her “amateur” status, her gender, and perhaps even her own transnational identity. However, her work fits into a long photographic tradition of “vernacular” ethnographers and her contribution is to be found in her “performance” or production. She should, then, be reclaimed as a significant actor in the history of Basque ethnography.