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?
[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.
Most of the people in the photos seem be ordinary, working class people. Even buddhist monks, who swore to live in poverty, celibacy and to avoid food that was too flavorful.
It isn't like we don't have records of ordinary people, even the homeless, or criminals. It's more like people like you claim the existence of a whole another kind of "poor people", who were supposedly the absolute majority, who suffered somewhere, completely ignored by everybody, and worked long hours every day on... being poor? It just doesn't seem to add up.
