In the years 1961 and 1962, the Austrian anthropologist who later became director of the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna, Hans Manndorff, was working on behalf of the United Nations on a research and development project in the highlands of Northern Thailand. The project, titled ‘The socio-economic survey of selected hill tribes in Northern Thailand’, was the first government-supported study of the so-called hill tribes of Thailand. Officially conducted by the Public Welfare Department of the Ministry of Interior, several other organizations, such as the Asia Foundation that provided financial support, assisted in the project.
During this research (1961-1965) Manndorff build up an archive of approximately 800 ethnographic slides documenting economic, social and ritual activities of the five selected ethnic minority groups. The ethnographical photographs deal in general with the same topics and cultural settings as the 54 ethnographical IWF documentary films. The photos also show scenes in far more remote villages and hill ranges since the heavy and complicated film equipment necessary for making IWF movies could hardly be brought into the very distant interior of the ethnic minority areas. Furthermore, the slide collection includes about 40 photographs that display the anthropologist Hans Manndorff himself.
This collection consist of 857 ethnographic photographs from Manndorff’s anthropological research in Chiangmai, Chiangrai, and Tak province in Northern Thailand from 1961 to 1962 and 1963 to 1965. These photographs represent economic, social, ritual etc. activities primarily of six Hill Tribes: Lisu, Lahu, Akha, Hmong, Karen, and Yao.
