Who took the photograph?
There were two people involved with this photograph. The first person is known to be the author of the photograph named Albert Kahn. The other, who actually pointed the camera at the Mongolian woman in a box was Stéphane Passet.
Albert Kahn was a French millionaire banker and a Philanthropist. He had a great interest for photography so he devoted some time of his life and money to capture images of cultures, traditions, and customs of different people and places of the world.
One man wasn’t able to capture images of the world alone, so Albert Kahn hired a team of professional photographers (including Stéphane Passet) and sent them to more than 50 countries around the world, shooting more than 100 hours of film footage and 72,000 captured images using the autochromia camera made by the Lumiere brothers in 1903.
He named those photographs “The archives of the planet.”
Why didn’t Stéphane Passet help the woman?
Stéphane Passet was touring Mongolia and taking pictures in 1913, when he came across the Mongolian woman in a box. In the photograph you could see two bowls on the ground for water and food. She was given food and water not on a daily basis but in a way to prolong her suffering.
In other not to alter the balance of local laws and civilizations of Mongolia, Or in another words get himself in trouble, Stéphane Passet Left the woman in the box.
But with his camera he helped raise awareness of such practice in Mongolia. Though it yielded nothing.
What’s immurement and how does such a cruel practice relate to women?
Immurement was a form of capital punishment where by a person or persons who committed a crime is left to die of starvation and dehydration in an enclosed space with no exit.
Victims could be placed in a box with a little hole were air and food could come in or being bricked up in a small room of a basement or dungeon.
In some cases, they were people who willingly gave themselves up to be immured, perhaps for religious purposes and they were also some innocent ones who went through this cruel fate.
In it’s earlier times it was one of the forms of torture used on women in particular.
In ancient Rome, they were some women who were regarded as Vestal Virgins (a class of priestess whose principal duty was to maintain the sacred fire dedicated to Vesta; the goddess of the home and family). They were to live under a strict vow of chastity and celibacy. If they were found guilty of breaking their chastity vows, then they face the cruel punishment of immurement.
This practice went on for years even till the early 20th century. From just being a Capital punishment to being used as a form of entertainment or as a human sacrifice to remedy problems in a construction project and also for religious purposes.
In a newspaper report from 1914, it is written “the prisons and dungeons of the far eastern country, contains a number of refined Chinese shut up for life in heavy iron-bound coffins which do not permit them to sit upright or lie down. These prisoners see day light for only few minutes daily when the food is thrown into their coffins through a small hole.”