Kruger National Park

A friend of mine has given me access to thousands of slides taken by her late father-in-law, Denis James Strever, over fifty years ago. Many of the colour slides (Agfacolor) have changed colour towards purple and magenta because of their age and I’ve adjusted some of the photographs to sepia to enhance their appearance. Sandy Buchanan was invaluable in identifying the vehicles in the photographs.

In going through the photos of long ago Kruger Park trips in the 1970s, it became clear that when visiting the Kruger National Park in South Africa, even if you don’t see significant wildlife, one thing you are sure to see is cars. Those cars of the 70s represent a bygone age that is getting more ‘bygone’ as the decades pass, and these modern automobiles are just as glamorous as those shown by Carol Hardijzer in his 2018 article Snapshot Photography - Automobiles photographed in South Africa from the 1920s to 1960s (click here to view).

Many of the cars of the 1960s and 1970s are now highly collectible, especially in the USA, and buying one could set you back thousands of dollars if it is in good original condition. 

On your trip to the famous Kruger National Park, you might have wanted to see wildlife or even just stare at nothing. Wherever you go, there will be people, picnics and cars.

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Following on from a recent Heritage Portal article by Carol Hardijzer about the fascination and value of ‘botched’ amateur photographs (click here to read), a friend of mine lent me some of her late father-in-law’s collection of colour slides taken on visits to the Kruger National Park in the 1960s. And when we say, ‘collection’ we are talking about a cardboard box filled with over eighty blue plastic Agfacolor slide boxes covering many trips to the Kruger National Park and other places. I haven’t counted the actual slides but at about 35 slides per box, this must be at least 2000 small format colour slides in their plastic mounts. They have not been looked at for 50 years. They are numbered, each slide written on with a pencil, but there is no longer a key. Some places are recognisable, while others are just a type of ubiquitous Kruger Park holiday image. And not that these photographs are necessarily ‘botched’ but are rather photographs taken by an avid, non-professional photographer, using an ‘ordinary’ camera, so no wide angle or zoom lenses, really just ‘happy snaps’.

My friend has been sorting through things after her husband passed away and this cardboard box of slides is all that remains of her father-in-law, Denis James Strever’s memories of his Kruger Park holiday trips, family weddings and places lived in. By chance, this box of photos languished for 25 years on a very high shelf in the house, while other boxes of old holiday and family...