Links to help you search for relevant 19th century photographs:

Search using the key words, e.g., Papua New Guinea Next narrow/focus your results using available filters, e.g., photograph* and/or image* Here are results of my searches in the Library of Congress Digital Collections and the Smithsonian Institution Collections. I did not filter by date (i.e., BEFORE 1914), but I can sort these by the oldest items first. Please note: it may take a moment for you to discover how to filter your search. This technique should work for other geographic regions. Please give it a try, and contact me it you would like to consult about this. 

Sample searches to find relevant photographs: 

Library of Congress Digital Collections: Photos, Prints, Drawings https://www.loc.gov/photos/?q=Papua+New+Guinea

Smithsonian Institution: online images Motu (Papua New Guinean people) Click here to see the results I found.

Some places to search:

Library of Congress Digital Collections: https://www.loc.gov/photos/ Filter by date ranges on the left of the results screen.

Getty Search Gateway: Photographs: Click here for my search results. Filter by Place in the panel on the left of the screen.

You may wish to search for photography collections in specific locations. To do that, I recommend using a search engine (e.g., Google) and searching with key words for the Name of the place AND museum AND photography, for example India AND museum AND photography

Once you select a site to explore, you'll likely need to look for links on that site for Collections and narrow that down by time period and/or subjects to find what meets the requirements and that you are interested in researching.

Once you have found the photograph(s) to research, please use the guidance in the Finding Journal Articles box (just below this one) for guidance in that part of your research. Enjoy! -Tom (tom.bickley@csueastbay.edu)