Apr 19, 2018 - Sale 2474

Sale 2474 - Lot 21

Unsold
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
(ETHNOGRAPHY--NIGERIAN TRIBES)
A large and in-depth album containing 600 ethnographic studies documenting Southern and Southwestern Nigerian tribespeople, their rituals, prisoners, and day-to-day activities.
Included are numerous well-captured portraits and profiles of both men and women, displaying an array of complex hairstyles, ritualistic scarification, and some portraying cannibals with filed teeth; views of leisure with young boys playing physical games, elderly folk smoking, traditional musicians, and ceremonial masked dances; offerings, sacrifices, effigies of gods, and one shot of a Medicine Man; scenes of domesticity such as pottery, well-water retrieval, and a local market; and home interiors exhibiting large painted symbols and decorated walls. There are also photographs showing prisoners during meal-time and in captivity, clothed only in tattered rags. Many of the photographs include a mugshot-like numberboard partially or fully within the frame. Silver prints, the images measuring approximately 4x3 inches (10.2x7.6 cm.), and the reverse, mounted recto/verso to black pages, each image with a caption beneath, in ink. Oblong 4to, black leatherette; tied binding. Circa 1915-20

Additional Details






Some of the tribes and regions identified in the captions are the Agbasa, Olokon, Zanipodi, and Achara Village, many of which are today considered part of the Yoruba people.