Emile Ebrahim Kelly

This set of photographs came out of a huge and ridiculously heavy book titled “NATAL”. They seem to document someone’s journey across Natal (or KwaZulu), although there’s no information about who that might be. What grabbed me was simply the craft involved, the prints in the book were of such high quality and the composition of some of them is awesome; there were certain photographs that reminded me of Joel Sternfeld. I had to make a massive on the spot edit because the book was so large that the scans cost about 6 times what I was expecting. Unfortunately, when the CD with the scans arrived, certain images I was sure I had chosen weren’t on it. There was one in particular that sticks in my memory: a landscape in a park or botanical gardens, with a small white boy standing awkwardly staring into the camera, it was very strange. Which was what i like about the images, clearly they don’t do much to break from typical colonialist photographs, but they had this strangeness to them. I don’t know if the selection I’ve ended up with here really gets that across though. Thoughts?

Click the images for large versions, the scans don’t really convey the initial impact of seeing the prints, but its important to see them in as much detail as possible.

"Field of Pineapples"

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This is the first set of photographs I had scanned from the national archives. I loved them straight away, for the clothes and for the confidence of the subjects. They almost feel like fashion photographs, check out Waterboer Jnr’s (below right) posture and tilted brim!  The difference between these and the other photographs of ‘natives’ that I’ve been trawling through is massive. After a bit of research I’ve worked out the following. Here are 3 different leaders of 3 different people: the Griqua (Waterboer), the Bathlaping (Mankuroane) and the Barolong (Molema). All had territory claims in the Griqualand area (clearly the Griqua’s did!) and all were missionary educated Anglophiles who were courting the British in an attempt to gain protection from the looming Boer Republics. Unfortunately for them, Britain’s reputed even handed and benevolent approach to ‘native’ people within the colonies only lasted as long as it suited Britain. In 1866 Diamonds were discovered at Kimberley, from that moment Britain’s agenda in the area would change. I haven’t worked out exactly what the meeting these photographs document was about, but I’m on it!

I also tried to do a bit of research into the photographers, the Gray Brothers, and found only one reference. But it’s a tantalising one: In 1977 curator/collector Sam J Wagstaff put together a huge photography show from his personal collection. Included in the show was a photograph of a Kimberley mine taken in 1875 by the Gray Brothers. So that leads me to believe the clearly talented Gray Brothers must have created a body of work in Griqualand/South Africa around 1874/5 (maybe longer). I would love to find this, so if anyone has any information on the Gray Brothers (even if it’s just the image from the Sam Wagstaff show, which I haven’t seen) please get in touch.

Waterboer & his sons - The Gray Brothers, Griqualand West, 1874

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I was at the National Archives in Kew yesterday, starting to look at British involvement in South Africa through photographs. I found some fascinating images, but let me start by describing the process, because it really is an amazing experience. It takes a bit of work finding relevant looking stuff in their catalog, especially as the word “photographs” doesn’t seem to bring up many of the photographic collections. But with a bit of tinkering about and manually browsing from the odd starting point, you can find some quality stuff. I’m reading “Diamonds, Gold and War: The Making of South Africa” by Martin Meredith at the moment (great book, I’m sure lots of posts will spring from it), and I’ve found a good thing to do is use events, places or people as your starting point for the searches; rather than just searching ‘South Africa Photographs’, which brings up hardly anything.

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