Carol Hardijzer

Some 25 years ago I bought a substantial portion of a homemade Victorian photograph album which has fallen apart. This album, containing more than 50 pages, was rescued by a Johannesburg-based book dealer. Each of these pages came neatly wrapped in plastic, with the detail of each page, where available, retained and included at the back of each page.

Years later, by absolute fluke, I cannot even remember when and where, I obtained the remainder of the album containing the hard cover front and back pages along with five additional pages with pasted photographs that the dealer possibly did not see as important to protect in a similar vein. It may even be that this second batch was not in the original dealer’s possession and that it surfaced from somewhere else. Irrespective, the likelihood of me finding the remainder of the album some years later, without searching for it, still boggles the mind.

By including the details of each page, the dealer ensured that some provenance was saved. Sadly, even after dissecting the content, the original owner of the album has not been determined beyond reasonable doubt. It is safely assumed to have belonged to the wife of a Royal Navy officer who was based in Simonstown between the period 1862 and 1869, the same period that the HMS Valorous did service in the Cape waters.

Unlike the majority of Victorian albums, where photographs could be slid into purpose-made pockets, photographs in this album are pasted onto blank pages. The original...

While spending several days at the South African National Archives in Cape Town researching a theme relating to South African Photographic History, I stumbled upon a file that contained two original antique photographs. It attracted my attention in that it is rather unusual to find early photographs of this nature in archival records.

Although still photography-related, the theme that grabbed my attention was not part of my primary research intent whilst at the archives.

The story that unfolded is a sad one, yet an important one to capture in that it relates to the use of photographs in making a legal determination as to whether passengers have survived a tragic incident at sea.

The photographs contained in the file were used during a commission directed by the Cape Town Supreme Court in 1917.

In this case, the two photographs, captured by the Cape Town-based photographer Akkersdyk (Adderley Street), were marked Appendix B & Appendix C respectively in the inquest documentation.

Amelia Mary Gormley (Wilkinson) applied to the court to have her parents announced dead. She provided the two photographs to assist in the process.

Here is the story.

The fateful night - 26 May 1917

On 21 April 1917, the ship Carlos de Eizaguirre left Barcelona carrying 35 passengers. She reached Las Palmas on 30 April, where she bunkered before departing again on 5 May 1917. When she left the Las Palmas port, she carried 50 passengers, including eleven or twelve women and five children between the ages of three...

The Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) contains a considerable number of Cabinet Card format photographs of Anglo-Boer War soldiers, both Brit and Boer. Images in these formats are popular collector’s items, more so when the soldier whose likeness has been captured is known.

The Cabinet Card format photograph replaced the smaller Carte-de-Visite format photograph. The Cabinet Card format became the preferred photographic format produced by studios worldwide, also during the Anglo-Boer War.

The first South Africa-based photographer to have introduced the Cabinet Card format photograph was the Cape Town-based photographer SB Barnard (September 1867). This format only became universally adopted in 1868 and was in use until the early 1900s.

Ironically, even though introduced in 1867 in South Africa, the Cabinet Card only superseded the Carte-de-Visite format in South Africa from 1872 onwards. Although the popularity of this format waned internationally by the early 1900s, South African photographers used this format until the mid-1910s.

Once the photograph was captured and developed, it was pasted on a standard-sized cardboard (15.9 cm x 10.8 cm). The resultant Cabinet Card often contained the preprinted details of the photographer as well as the town where the studio was located. South African photographers mainly ordered these pre-printed cards from the UK or France.

During the Anglo-Boer War, soldiers, mainly British soldiers, had their likeness captured either before they left their hometowns in the United Kingdom, or whilst on South African soil, or their return home – these surviving images provide for a rich documentary military...

A few months ago, a significant photographic collection of the Johannesburg-based female photographer Sara Helena Violet Buijskes (1886 – 1970) was uncovered by Michael de Nobrega in Mosselbay resulting in an article being constructed on her live narrative (click here to read).

A single photographic portfolio curated in the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) by another enigmatic Johannesburg-based female photographer, Jane Plotz, also deserves attention.

Jane Plotz would have been a contemporary to Sara Buijskes. I cannot help but wonder whether the two knew each other personally in that their respective studios (Art Studio and Barbican Studio) would have been located a few hundred meters from each other.

While Buijskes, 15 years Jane Plotz’s senior, was active as a photographer in Johannesburg since 1906 (when Jane would have been only 5 years old), Sara only opened her own studio in 1931. Jane, who relocated from Port Elizabeth, seems to have opened her Art studio in the Thrupp’s Buildings as early as 1929. Indications are therefore that Jane was active in Johannesburg as a photographer for 45 years (until 1974).

Collating information around Jane Plotz was more challenging compared to Sara Buijskes where her live narrative was easily reconstructed with family input.

Hopefully, this article may generate input from the Plotz family that has not been identified at the time of constructing this article.

Jane Plotz family

Jane Plotz, a first-generation South-African and daughter of a Lithuanian Jew, was born in Port Elizabeth in 1901.

Jane was the middle of three...

A motto developed by myself over the years in my ongoing search for elusive historical photographs is: “Do not underestimate what could be found in drawers or little boxes”, resulting in me always curiously opening drawers or boxes when visiting antique shops, charity stores or attending car boot sales in that they may just contain some photographic surprises.

It then so happens that I opened a small Royal Arms Specials cigar box in a coastal antique shop a few years ago. What did it contain?

Some one hundred photographs from the Anglo-Boer War period. This cigar box was found in one of my favourite antique shops in Kalkbay (a shop that sadly no longer exists). Kalkbay, a coastal town in the Western Cape, has always been a reliable source for finding antique South African photographs.

On analysing the content of the cigar box, the original amateur photographs (8,5 x 8,5 cm in size) were found to be images captured by the war correspondent David Steward Howie. Howie was attached to the newspaper Times of Natal.

The photographs are not of professional quality but have become valuable historical documents in their own right.

Most of the photographs, with some duplication, were pasted onto pieces of paper on which Howie captured handwritten notes. Although McCrachen (2015) only has Howie recorded as a reporter for one publication, the assumption must be made that the duplicated images were possibly meant for another publication.

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In a recent article, “Heidelberg through the eyes of a deltiologist” (click here to view), I committed to follow that article up in similar vein on the town of Standerton.

The Heidelberg article unexpectedly obtained international attention in that it was also taken up in an international philatelic magazine, Forerunners (2023). This interest indicated to me that constructing short articles of this nature, relying on picture postcards to visually support the text, is of interest to a broader reader group.

This article, therefore, like the Heidelberg article, reflects on Standerton’s visual history up to the 1920s, relying on picture postcards of that era.

Standerton, part of the Mpumalanga province, was an obvious next article in that it is just over 100km from Heidelberg. The two towns were also linked via the rail line. Both Standerton and Heidelberg also obtained municipal status in the same year, namely 1903.

Unlike the town of Heidelberg (and other early South African towns), I found that the history of early Standerton has not been well recorded, resulting in many historical gaps and unanswered questions. Whilst historical snippets could be found, no cohesive record of the town’s history is available electronically.

The history of the little village town, Val, located between Heidelberg and Standerton has probably been better recorded than that of Standerton. Scholtz (1966), whilst containing some flaws and outdated, was, however, a useful source, without which I would have been grappling around in the dark even more.

Unlike Heidelberg, Standerton did not have the...

Philaphotographologist – what a highfalutin word! The word does not actually exist. Rackham (2022) applied his creativity and constructed the word following some discussion on the internet.

Personally, I rather like the word. It did take  me a minute or two to get my tongue around the pronunciation though (feela-foto-grafologist).

Rackham (2022) constructed the word as follows: Phila (to love), derived from French, followed by the two Greek words phōtós (light) and graphê (drawing) and concluding with the Latin word logia (branch of knowledge).

The word philaphotographologist translates into more understandable language, namely photograph enthusiast or photograph collector. That is what this article is about, an early South African photo enthusiast.

As a psychologist, I am intrigued by the visual orientation, or the lack thereof, in the human race.

Some of us are more inclined to a heightened visual curiosity compared to others. Those of us who have a lower level of aesthetic visual appreciation will be less inclined to give much attention to visual imagery, in this instance photographs, whilst to the visually curious, photographs provide visual stimulation.

In my mind, a person has to be visually curious to be referred to as a photo enthusiast, or a philaphotographologist for that matter.

One such person was Frederick William Willis. British-born, he became a South African citizen, initially attached to the South African Constabulary.

He loved photographs – so much so that he passionately constructed photo albums containing various themes.

I was privileged enough to get my hands on two...

Another find of photographs in a drawer at an antique shop has contributed to the reconstruction of a significant historical narrative around a little-known female photographer whose work has not received the recognition it deserves in South Africa.

Sara Buijskes as a young woman by unknown photographer (Circa 1900s). Her sister Maud, who later became her assistant in the Barbican studio would have been too young to capture this photograph.

On researching her, it quickly became evident that hardly any publicly documented information existed on her. The intention of the article is therefore to add to the knowledge base of not only early female photographers in South Africa but also South African photographic history in general.

Michael, the co-author of this article, was “scratching” around in an antique shop in Mosselbay in the Western Cape when he stumbled upon almost two hundred large format black and white photographs tucked away in the shop. He had the sense that this was a significant find and bought the entire batch there and then.

At the time he did not know who the photographer was, but the uniqueness of the images justified him buying the batch. Sufficiently curious to determine who the photographer was...

I describe myself as a South African photo historian, but at the same time, also an avid deltiologist. So what does that mean?

These two concepts are closely intertwined in that historical photographs and deltiology share a common interest in their visual representation. Combined, they contribute to presenting a variety of valuable historical narratives.

Photographs are documentary and journalistic in nature. They provide us with records of events, people, and places, whereas deltiology relates to the study and collection of postcards. Deltiologists, in turn, collect postcards for their historical, cultural, and artistic value. These old postcards provide us with a most valuable visual reflection of our past.

Until very recently, postcards were the most popular form of communication, where the back of the card was used for written communication with the front of the card presenting a visual narrative of some sort. Various social media platforms, in use today, have replaced the postcard as a communication tool.

The relationship between photography and deltiology therefore lies in the fact that postcards often feature photographs as their primary visual theme. However, not all postcards originate from photographs in that many postcards are also artistic creations.

In the early days of postcards, before colour photography became prevalent, most postcards were black and white or sepia-toned photographs. Colour postcards from before a certain era were all hand-coloured – like all the coloured postcards included in this article.

Early photographs used in publishing postcards were mainly topographical, showing street or general scenes, landmarks, and buildings...

There’s a war out there! Picture this…A dark smoke-filled room, the smell of burning oil, and the near-rhythmic sound of an instrument in use – the magic lantern.

The dimly lit room is filled with a curious audience eagerly awaiting the start of the show – a projection of images on a blank wall or screen.

What follows has them mesmerised. War-related images are projected one after the other from a single light source, fuelled by an oil lamp or by an electric light source. Occasional gasps and murmurs of awe can be heard from those in attendance.

The theme for the evening – The Anglo-Boer War. 

The audience has a boundaryless interest in examining the sketches and drawings, alive with movement, which conjures scenes of their countrymen’s heroism and sacrifice, the Tommy Atkins of Britain.

The atmosphere is one of excitement, wonder, and anticipation. Ultimately there is even a parent in the audience who states: “My son is there”, adding to the patriotic emotions and stirring the curiosity of the remainder of the audience.

The audience hangs onto every word uttered by the ‘storyteller’ standing and narrating the images being projected one by one, and in doing so, assisting in creating mental images for the audience of the war down south.

Narratives became important during these magic lantern show evenings. Given the theme of war, the narrator, or storyteller, was in all probability triumphant, patriotic, and at times melodramatic in approach.

For the audience, it remained a unique visual...