Oct 22, 2020 - Sale 2548

Sale 2548 - Lot 258

Unsold
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(SOUTH AFRICA)
Homemade South African album with 24 exceptional photographs detailing the practices, customs, and people of the Mpondo tribe.


Including extraordinary images of the Mpondo, apparently made by the wife of a trader, including rituals and ceremonies, herbalists, doctors, children, beer making, everyday routines, and more, all with a sympathetic ethnographic approach. The album was made by Mrs. Fred Clarke (née Ethel Goss) (c. 1890-post 1940?), Thatchings, Umtata (the capital of what used to be Transkei, now called the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa). Silver prints, the images measuring approximately 4x2 1/2 inches (10.2x6.4 cm.), and slightly smaller, and the reverse, each with a neat caption, in ink, below the image. Oblong18mo, wooden covers with a blue cloth backstrip, starting; with the photographer's name and copyright, in ink, inside the front cover. 1930s