The great classification of difference that appears in human society is organized principally by the concept of race. The invention of photography facilitated and promoted this human classification through allowing the recording, representation, collection and display of people. In cultural and social anthropology, photography was used to create another sort of archive, one concerned with the identification of types and, therefore, with social control. The institutional and the personal archive are cross-fertilizing, and both play a significant role in the formation of identity.
