I'm not buying this. All these claims rely on some nebulous "poor people" who were kept hidden away somewhere. There is no good reason to doubt that these photos show regular people, and the buildings they lived in.

Mm. When I go on holiday, I take notice of mundane things in the new place that are different to mundane things in my normal life. Street furniture, pylons, graffiti, the contents of supermarket shelves, dusty unpaved roads[0].

But over the years I have come to realise that I'm very odd.

When you go on holiday, how many photos do you take of regular people, vs. tourist attractions? Or, in reverse, do you know regular people[1] who often find tourists visiting their area like to take photos of their homes?

[0] When I visited Nairobi a decade back, one of my photos was along the lines of this Google Street View image: https://www.google.com/maps/@-1.2811367,36.9148575,3a,75y,17...

[1] This site being what it is, there's a decent chance you know someone world-famous and people do actually want photos of their home. They're not "regular people".

Both of my grandpas (who have passed away long ago), would beg to differ. People, especially when taking photos wasn't basically free, don't take photos of ordinary things. If you see 1 rose among 500 tulips, that will catch your eye. And vice versa.

Poor people were not hidden away, it's just their lives weren't that beautiful to be shown and paraded around.

I have a couple books full of photos of the Civil War. There are a lot of ordinary soldier and camp life pictures in it.

Maybe, these being taken in the 19th century when photography was expensive, they were well off enough to afford paying for it?