Carol Hardijzer

Following the announcement that a Johannesburg-based book dealer was relocating from Johannesburg to Cape Town and that he was offering material at discounted prices, I went scratching. 

Amongst others, what did I find? A photo album containing 31 large format photographs, 26 of which are of particular interest to me. Amongst these 26 images are 15 photographs by the photographer, Henri Ferdinand Gros. This alone sealed the deal – the album was bought purely because of the HF Gros images.

Gros, a Swiss citizen, who was active in South Africa between 1869 and around 1895, is recorded as having been Pretoria’s first permanent photographer. He was also the first to record early Transvaal photographically, which makes his work unique.

Although the album contained these 15 valuable Gros images of early Transvaal, this is not where the story is going.

The album contained some additional provenance - it belonged to P. Baily Eastwood. One of the photo inscriptions underneath a photograph of Eastwood states that he was a photographer, baker and cook, presumably whilst travelling the Transvaal around the 1890s. This provenance diverted my attention from the Gros photographs.

Philip Baily Eastwood (circa 1890). The photograph is inscribed "P. Baily Eastwood - photographer, baker, cook, etc. - Our house and home July and August 1890." The man standing on the right is in all probability his assistant Piet.

 ...

My primary interest as a photo historian is in historical South African photographs from before 1915, but photographs from before the 1960s are not totally excluded from my research interest. 

Most images curated in the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) are, therefore, more than 65 years old with some as old as 175 years.

So, often I walk into a charity store asking for old photographs. A comment I receive all too often is: “We discard them due to the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).” or “We recycle them based on legal opinion received.”

Another disturbing comment, although not relevant to this article, is: “We discard them in that there is no interest/value in old photographs.” One charity worker recently added: “You are the only person ever to have enquired about photographs.”

Although I reluctantly accept that there may possibly be some validity in these views by charity organisations, the destruction of photographs cannot be applied as a blanket approach to all photographs donated.

The reliance on the law to justify the destruction of historical images is, therefore, absolute nonsense and largely ill-guided. Charity organisations that take this stance, willingly and knowingly partake in the destruction of South African heritage, possibly important artifacts.

The ongoing and “wilful” destruction of photographs due to the law allegedly being prescriptive around this irks me, resulting in me researching this aspect to better understand these arguments.

It needs to be said upfront that I am not a legal practitioner. Should any of the facts...

The primary photograph under discussion in this article is the 8-pane panoramic photograph of early Johannesburg (1888) by the photographer David Hyman Davies.

The 270° panoramic photograph was obtained from a Pretoria-based resident who stated that the image had significant relevance to the family back then in that a great-grandfather (one J. van den Berg) was a wood transporter between Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. The Scott Guthrie & Co timber yard, on Pritchard Street, can also be seen on the far left of the image where van den Berg would have delivered the wood.

The photograph was captured from the roof of the double-storey Arcade building (on the corner of Rissik and President Streets – where the Barbican building stands today).

Davies would have used an ordinary wet-plate bellows camera and lens to capture each image which were then pieced together to produce the panoramic image. The camera would have been carefully pivoted on a tripod with a series of exposures of slightly overlapping aspects of the same view. Following the exposures, Davies would then have developed the images, trimmed the resultant segments, and pieced the individual images together to produce the final panoramic view.

The photograph, pasted onto a cloth-like material, 1.8 meters in length, sadly shows signs of deterioration following its 137-year existence.

On collecting and paying for the photograph, I was informed that if I were not interested in the photograph, the image would have been discarded in that there no longer was any interest in the...

Photographs are omnipresent. They possess the power to shock us or to idealise, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial (Berger in Sontag, 1979).

Historical photographs allow us to “see” the historical visual narratives captured therein. This requires the historical photograph to be interpreted by the viewer, contributing to the narrowing of the gap between the past and present.

Most abandoned photographs come without any provenance or description, leaving the interpretation thereof up to us. Such interpretation may send us down the garden path in that the interpretation is based on our very own frame of reference.

Sensible visual interpretation of historical imagery therefore requires a healthy blend of curiosity, analytical skills, historical knowledge and cultural sensitivity to unlock the narratives behind the images and in doing so preserve their significance for future generations.

The word photo interpretation is typically associated with the analysis of aerial photographs. Alternative wording could be picture or visual interpretation. In this article, I therefore elect to use visual interpretation throughout.

All too often I find myself stuck in interpreting a photograph. In many instances, the answer is obvious, whilst in others the questions remain hanging. In some instances, I have been left with a psychological hypothesis about the sitter/s.

The questions that often arise for me may entail:

• Why was the photograph even considered worthwhile capturing?
• What is the “message” contained therein?
• Why did the photographer (or the people in the photograph) elect to photograph or pose in selected ways...

Early photographs lacked the realism of the painted portrait in that the production of a photograph in colour at the time of its invention was not feasible.

A great deal of scepticism as well as excitement came about during the development of photography in the 1840s. While some hailed it as a revolutionary step in the quest for artistic realism, others were concerned about what the new medium would mean for traditional artistic practices.

The very nature of photography raised philosophical questions about art itself. If a “machine” could produce an image portraying realism, what implications did it have for the artists? The question of whether photography could be considered "art" lingered for decades, as the view was that it lacked the manual skill and conceptual depth that many traditional artists believed were integral to true artistic expression.

The early photographic processes, such as the Daguerreotype (introduced in 1839), Calotype (introduced in 1841) and the Ambrotypes (introduced early 1850s), were monochromatic images in shades of black, white, and grey. Adding colour made them more visually appealing and bridged the gap between photography and traditional portraiture which were often produced in colour.

Portrait painters, who had once enjoyed a monopoly on representing human likenesses, found themselves in direct competition with daguerreotypists. The speed, accuracy, and affordability of photographs appealed to a wide audience, making portraiture accessible to the middle-class who could not afford expensive paintings.

Following the invention of the photograph, monied sitters were not satisfied with their likenesses being produced...

Searching for abandoned South African photographs is a passion of mine in that many photographs contain valuable historical provenance which then becomes useful in reconstructing historical narratives.

The provenance can relate to the individuals posing for the photographs, the photographers or a broad spectrum of themes. These themes may include war-related imagery, trains, planes, cars, toys, clothing, hats or animals. One of my personal abstract favourites is black and white photographs showing up the photographer’s lack of skill in the use of the camera.

Social media activity confirms that both the concepts of “abandoned” and “found” photographs have become accepted words amongst photographic historians and enthusiasts alike.

Photographs become abandoned when a family can no longer relate to the people or subject matter, resulting in the photograph albums containing these images being discarded.

I appreciate family members who donate family photograph albums to charity organisations, selling them online or at car boot sales.

On a negative note, unbeknown to the donators of photographs to charity organisations in South Africa is that the photographs end up being destroyed because many of these organisations believe that by selling the images they may be transgressing the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). They are sadly ill-guided and in doing so actively destroying possible historical-significant objects. This sensitive issue will be addressed in a future article.

I cringe at the thought of how much valuable imagery has been destroyed or is still being destroyed by simply tossing it in the rubbish/recycling bin or burning...

The history of commercial photography began in Europe in 1839, with a slower kick-off in South Africa.

The first commercial photographer active in South Africa was Julius Léger (October 1846) – a Frenchman who first set up his photographic studio in Port Elizabeth.

The first commercial photographer to advertise his services in Cape Town on 6 April 1847, was the German citizen, Carel Sparmann, a short-lived professional daguerreotypist.

Until 1854, all overseas professional photographers to set up studios in South Africa arrived mainly from either Britain, Germany or France.

None of the early Cape daguerreotypists prospered. In December 1847, all of Sparmann’s photographic equipment was sold at a public auction at his residence. Amongst the photographic equipment auctioned, were four daguerreotype cameras. Another daguerreotypist, the Dutchman Van Zweel, did not fare any better, his studio only lasting a few months.

It was only after the daguerreotype patent had expired in 1853 that pressure was placed on William Henry Fox Talbot to release his hold on British photography, by first allowing amateurs to practise the calotype process (*) freely, followed by him dropping his application for the renewal of the patent that the pattern changed in terms of commercial photography, resulting in an influx of European photographers to South Africa.

(*) Calotype process - an early photographic technique where a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura. Areas exposed to light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image.

The purpose of this...

A Victorian photograph album can be described as an artefact, but so can the content. Each photograph included in these albums of old is therefore also an artefact in its own right. Where provenance, such as details of the photographer and/or sitter, is provided on a photograph, the value of the photographic artefact becomes even more significant.

A recent Victorian album acquired by the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) contained a single cabinet card format photograph which immediately grabbed my attention. It is a rather playful image showing nine men, eight of which are medical students who underwent their training in Edinburgh between 1875 and 1883. The photograph, with a hand written inscription: “Cape Medical Students/Edinburgh”, was captured on 23 August 1878 by the Scottish photographer Jas. Howie Junior.

Also included in the album were some smaller Carte-de-Visite format photographs of the same individuals that appear on the Cabinet Card. In addition, the album also contained another two medical students who do not appear on the Cabinet Card image.

What makes the Cabinet Card unique is that each sitter’s name has been recorded on the back of the card. Without this provenance, this card would just have become another image of interest, but of little value as an artefact.

This creatively posed image is further of interest in that the medical students are seemingly studying a human skeleton (bones and skeleton). Two of the sitters are holding long pipes. These pipes are known as churchwardens or reading pipes (in German)...

By chance, two deltiologists meet. Initially, unbeknown to each other, they share the same collecting interest, namely picture postcards from the Transvaal-based town of Middelburg. Ironically, today, they only stay some five kilometers from each other.

Rex collects Middelburg postcards because of him having resided in Middelburg in his younger adult years. He was also the mayor of Middelburg in the early 1990s. Carol on the other hand collects Middelburg as part of a larger historical Transvaal-themed research collection.

We agreed to combine our collections to present a richer historical visual narrative of this town which was established as early as 1866. This article then also becomes the third in a series on old Transvaal towns relying on picture postcards of old (between 1900 and 1920s). The first two articles were on the towns of Heidelberg (click here to read) and Standerton (click here to read).

The photographic picture postcard was mainly in use between 1900 and the 1920s resulting in the visual history of this, and future Transvaal towns on which articles are pending, being restricted to a period of 20 years.

This article also does not portray the full visual history for this period as the historical narrative presented below was determined by the 100-year-old Middelburg picture postcards available between the two collections.

The postcards included in this article are therefore by no means a complete representation of postcards produced on Middelburg before 1920.

Middelburg had the honour of having a little booklet, containing some early picture postcards on the...

Pre-1930s, the art of photography in South Africa was a Eurocentric affair. While the South African Black population may have been photographed extensively (more so from an Ethno-photographic angle), little, if anything, has been recorded on professional studio photographers of colour during this era.

In my previous articles on the history of South African photography, I have reflected that pre-1920 South African-based photographers were all white, resulting in these articles having mostly a Eurocentric flair.

This brings me to a crucially important question on South African photographic history.

Is it possible that South-African citizens of colour only started considering photography as a profession post the 1920s, some seventy years after the first commercial photographer, the Frenchman, Jules Léger, arrived in South Africa (1846)?

My hypothesis - unlikely. The challenge remains to find the evidence for this hypothesis. The primary source for such evidence resides in obtaining original photographs captured by photographers of colour as these early original images may contain the details of the actual photographer.

The Indian population (as well as Chinese) was brought into the country as indentured labour at the turn of the 1900s, explaining part of the reason why they possibly would only have set themselves up as studio photographers a few years down the line. But what about the African Black and Coloured population?

For the benefit of the international reader, in South Africa reference is made to the White, African Black, Indian, and Coloured (or brown community), where the latter three are also referred...