PHOTOGRAPHY - NIGERIA


Album of photograph views in Lagos, Akeokuta, Old Calabar, Okuta, Saki, and locations "up country to Otta", the building of the railway, and portraits (local inhabitants and European), 67 albumen prints (47 half-page, approximately 140 x 215mm., others smaller) of Nigerian interest, 10 others of Sierra Leone (4 large views, 3 towards Tower Hill from the sea, one of the town signed in the negative by W.S. Johnston"), mostly 2 per page mounted recto and verso on card, captioned in ink beneath images, disbound, oblong folio, [1897-1898]
|Views include Lagos (c.15, including "store on the Marina", "W. Africa Government offices", Catholic, Wesleyan and Anglican churches, "General view" across housetops, "Custom House Wharf", "Boat-race day on Lagos Lagoon", "Colonial Hospital"); Ebua Metta (3, including "Opening of Lagos Govt. Railway... Govr. MacCallum, Engineers & truck-loads of Kings", landing place, and forestry), and others related to the railway (8, including "Railway works on Oddo Island", and 2 showing the forest from same position before and after clearance for the track); good series of Abeokuta and neighbouring areas ("King's Palace", "Odé-Oro-Abeokuta. Our messenger & breadman with canteen on his head", "crossing River Oguu", "River Oguu in dry season", "native fisherman at Abeokutu", general views "from above" showing village thatched houses, "market place", four of the rock formations with people or houses, "Saki (Youruba Country)", "Okuta. 3 days from Saki. Poor Corcoran (R.A.M.C.) died here", "Oké-Gbedi near Ipapo").Nine group portraits comprise: "Gold Coast Virgins", "Bariba natives with poisoned arrows", "a Lagos sweel [sic] & his wife", "Saugobomie - a Lagos belle, spinster"; "Women water carriers with Calabashes", "a fetish play", "a (?)Kroo-boy play called 'Igugue'", "Tea houses and worshippers", and "The deposed King of Benin with Capt. Moore R.N. aboard the... yacht Ivy".Provenance: Otto Elsner (1871-1953) who, having studied at the Royal College of Surgeons, was employed as the Medical Officer for the building of the Ibadan to Illorin Railway from 1897 to 1898. He appears in two the photographs "taken on board S.S. Axiom at Sierra Leone homeward bound", and another on the veranda of the Mission House at Aké, Akeokuta.