Charles Burlingame Waite’s images also reveal a country where privation is very much a part of everyday reality and the gulf between rich and poor is rapidly increasing. His numerous study portraits of women and children show them in their traditional dress, at work, or in a state of destitution. His portraits of poor, naked children are criticized by the press as demeaning to both the children and the nation. Some photos are deemed pornographic by the Mexican postal code and become illegal to circulate. The uproar, probably exacerbated by the fact that Waite is a foreigner, leads to his imprisonment for three days in 1901.

Many photographs follow the costumbrista style of portraying Mexicans as "types" according to their class and labor. The photographs of the studio portrait photographer Lorenzo Becerril are an excellent example; the subjects are removed from their immediate context and photographed with artificial backdrops of wooded landscapes, as if to suggest a natural affinity between indigenous peoples and the land ­ an affinity that, it should be noted, cannot be captured in reality. Hence, while the intent may be to dignify the subject, the effect of such photographs is to romanticize indigenous people or turn them into objects of study. They become living artifacts, a characterization that masks their real living conditions.

Photography is key to nineteenth-century scientific theories that relate physiognomy to character. Frederick Starr comes to Mexico in 1896, and again in 1898, to study the physical features of indigenous people. He shares the commonly held and racist belief that native Indians are an inferior race and seeks evidence for this theory by measuring heads and bodily proportions. Appropriately, Starr dedicates his study to Díaz.