This article examines the visualization of Hutsuls in German-Austrian, Ukrainian, Polish and Russophile ethnographic texts, asking how national and imperial imaginations of space were produced through such fluid cross-linking of texts and photographs. Considering the radical changes in image circulation since the late-19th century, we aim to reconsider the role of photography in image-making of the Habsburg Empire. This article shows how the same images were supposed to serve many purposes, when they were embedded in different settings. The construction of photographic objectivity, the circulation of images through imperial infrastructures and the exoticization of rural peoples were, however, common phenomena.