Carol Hardijzer

1. Introduction

Taking photographs some 150 years ago was a significantly more complicated process compared to today. It was hard work and required absolute dedication from aspirational photographers.

These pioneer photographers endured tough times, yet they left us with scenes of significant historical importance some of which have been preserved for posterity. Sadly, these photographers have largely been forgotten in that we freely use their images in articles and publications to support our own historical constructions without acknowledging the original photographic artist.

One of these early historical scenes and human activities that attracted treasure hunters and aspirational photographers alike was the frenzy that ensued following the discovery of a single shiny stone in March 1867 in South Africa.

A second stone found shortly thereafter was taken to Cape Town, where it was photographed by the well-known photographer SB Barnard. These images, in carte-de-visite format, were in high demand and were sold to the public in 1867 (Bull & Denfield, 1966).

The diamond, The Star of South Africa, was discovered two years later (March 1869) and is recorded to have been photographed by Port Elizabeth-based photographer James E. Bruton and later also by the Cape Town-based South African Photographic Saloon (to which a Kimberley-based photographer, Sederstrom, was initially linked). It was this diamond that finally resulted in the frenzy searching for the elusive stones in 1869.

While tribute has been paid to the early-day Kimberley pioneers, the contribution made by photographers has sadly been neglected. These early photographers ultimately also...

Following the article on the visual history of the Pretoria Railway station (click here to view), I received an email from Germany-based Enno Schlechter (co-author) which contained a photograph of his great-great-grandparents, Theodor and Mary Fiebiger.

The information available to the family, resulted in an initial link made that the Fiebiger couple ran the Pretoria railway station restaurant. What probably contributed to this initial view was the photograph in their possession of the Fiebiger couple by the Pretoria-based photographer, Munro.

A German and an English woman - Cabinet format photograph by Pretoria-based photographer Munro of Theodor Fiebiger and his wife Mary Alice. The couple got married in Krugersdorp in 1897. This photograph shows Mary with a wedding ring. She passed away in 1899. The photograph, therefore, dates from circa 1898, whilst the couple were based in Vereeniging.

Further research, however, indicated that the couple was not Pretoria-based, but rather Krugersdorp,  Vereeniging and Johannesburg based – either involved in mining, or managing a railway station restaurant at one station and a bar at another.

Later, Enno forwarded me another incredible image of Theodor and Mary with the restaurant staff in front of the Vereeniging railway station restaurant. This photograph, proudly displayed in the family home in Germany, assisted in stitching together...

For more than 150 years, airborne cameras have produced awe-inspiring images of our planet, revealed the devastating scale of natural disasters down below, consequences of ugly wars, tipped the scales in combat, assisted in studying plant ecology, identifying archaeological spots, constructing maps and much more.

Eventually underpinned by militaristic surveillance, aerial photography became a world tendency that took off 30 years after the invention of photography. Aerial photography immediately attracted photographic pioneers, who captured exquisitely composed aerial photographs.

This article primarily focuses on South African aerial photographic history but also had to deviate into a neighbouring country by including a crucial historical portion related to aviation activity during the conflict between South Africa and the Germans in early Namibia during World War I.

In support of this article, aerial photographs, spanning 70 years were either extracted from the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) or relevant web pages.

First, a brief reflection on the world history of aerial photography.

1. Brief World history – Aerial photography

Not long after commercial photography was invented “adventurous amateurs” launched cameras into the sky using balloons, kites, pigeons, and even rockets.

• Gaspar Felix Tournachon, more commonly known as “Nadar,” is credited with taking the first successful aerial photograph as early as 1858 from a hot air balloon tethered 262 feet (80 meters) above Petit-Bicêtre (now Petit-Clamart) just outside Paris. Sadly, these original photographs have been lost.
• Two years later (1860), the first American to capture the oldest surviving aerial photographs was James Wallace Black. These...

The Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) occasionally receives photographic donations linked to a particular individual or family, often with limited provenance where neither the family nor searches on the internet can add sufficient additional information to construct a detailed narrative.

This brief article constructs a narrative based on the photographs with some input from the benefactor, a family member.

Following an unrelated article published on The Heritage Portal, I was contacted by a United Kingdom-based reader, Richard A Green, who donated photographic artefacts taken by his adoptive father, Arthur Edward Green, dating from the 1920s.

While limited information is available about this soldier, hunter, engineer, traveller, and amateur photographer, Arthur Edward Green, the photographs he captured remain of historical significance.

During the early 1970s, Richard A Green presented these same photographs to the National Gallery of Canada (Richard Green resided in Canada for a while), which duly catalogued each image, providing them with titles/descriptions and returned the originals to Richard Green. The catalogue numbering of these photographs ranges between 73-31387 to 73-31450 and AC-23-74-1 to AC-23-74-61.

Captions on the back of the small-format photographs, measuring 8 cm x 6 cm, indicate that Arthur Edward Green captured the images shared below whilst he was working on various civil-engineering projects in African countries such as South Africa, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe today), Kenya, and Tanganyika (Tanzania today).

Typical black and white photographs, ending up in family photograph albums dating between the 1920s and 1950s, are uninteresting at the best of times in that...

Watching a British quiz program recently, one of the questions posed to a participant was: “What is the study of facial hair referred to as?” The answer: Pogonology!

Even the electronic spell checker does not recognise this word, confirming that it is not a word in general use.

The thought that crossed my mind at that point was that the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) contains many South African Cabinet Card format photographs dating from the Victorian and Edwardian eras containing examples of bearded South African men. Why not share these?

Therefore, all photographs included in this article are in Cabinet Card format, the most popular household photographic format between the 1880s and 1915. People typically placed these photographs in Victorian photo albums or frames in Victorian homes.

These 19th-century photographs explore some beards worn by the South African white male population. Some beards were proudly worn - neat and styled, whilst others came across as burly and unkempt.

While it may be prudent to do so, considering the title, it is not my intent to go into details about each beard’s cut, shape, and form as portrayed in the photographs shared in this article.

The psychology behind the beard

The fascinating aspect of facial hair is that it has no functional role to play. It remains ornamental because it has no specific physiological function to fulfil. Unlike other hair on our body, a beard does nothing other than fulfilling a deeper lying psychological aspect towards male masculinity.

University of...

Picture this, the year, around 1915 - Surrounded by an atmosphere of dust and the noise of motor trolleys and mule wagons stood this old wood and iron building which for many years housed the staff of the South African Railway (SAR) photographic works attached to the then publicity department.

The dilapidated exterior of the building portrayed no indication to the outsider of the amount of activity and photographic creativity that took place amongst its walls.

The building referred to here was situated on the roadside of the great yard of Kazerne goods station in Johannesburg.

This article attempts to acknowledge and honour those men who were attached to early the South African rail photographic section, based in this building following a merger of rail services during 1911.

1. Introduction

Early South African photographers can simplistically be divided into three broad categories, namely professional / commercial, non-commercial (typically government departments) or the amateur photographer.

To date, historians have not awarded early non-commercial South African photographers the recognition and acknowledgement they deserve.

In a recent article on the history of South African Photography (click here to view) to which an updated register of South African professional/commercial photographers from before 1915 was attached, it was pointed out that the list excluded photographers employed within governmental entities – such as those employed by the police and prison services, medical institutions, agricultural services, military, aerial or railway photographers.

The primary intent with this article is therefore to record non-commercial photographers who were active within...

Little did I know that the “old man”, Dotman Pretorius, who captured a photograph of a group of course goers during the mid-1980s, which I was part of, would become a personal research subject some 40 years down the line. Dotman would have been in his late 60s at the time he captured this particular photograph.

When capturing the photograph, he used old-fashioned flashlight technology. I was so intrigued by this, that I asked him whether I may have the large blue glass bulb that he used to produce the flashlight. He happily parted with the unusable item, an item which still features in my photographic collection.

Four decades later, in a Johannesburg-based book shop, I stumbled upon a number of good quality and unique photographs of various themes captured by Dotman Pretorius. Those that initially attracted my attention were the photographs taken by him at Pretoria’s Capitol Theatre during the 1950s.

Opening evening of a 1955 British movie “Geordie” at the Pretoria Capitol theatre during 1956. The movie entails a Scotsman who competes in the summer Olympics, therefore the presence of the pipe band. The theatre, on Parliament Street...

Within the cover page of a Victorian photo album recently acquired for the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC), a poem written in Dutch/Afrikaans was found. Given the era of the album, as well as the content of the poem, it is thought the poem was penned (typed) prior to 1910. I find the poem intriguing and simply have to share it. I retyped the poem with the original grammatical errors included as well as informally translated (click here to read).

The typewriter has been in use since around the mid-1880s. It is therefore assumed that the poem would have been typed by the author, Ompie (Uncle), himself.

The grammatical errors and some sentence structure in the original poem can be safely linked to Ompie’s lack of typing skills. The spelling of Ompie in itself is also incorrect. The correct spelling, Oompie, is a diminutive of Oom (Uncle).

The album sadly contained no provenance, so it is therefore not possible to determine who the album may have belonged to. It is assumed that Ompie is the uncle of the original owner of the Victorian Photo Album, a young female at the time. It is also assumed that her uncle wrote the poem because of his personal observation of changes taking place within the younger generation.

The poet applied a couplet style (where two successive lines rhyme), however, the translated version into English loses the intent of rhyme.

As much as things change, they remain the same. Analysing the poem reminds me of modern-day...

This article reflects on the early religious establishments in Pretoria, intuited from images as portrayed on picture postcards (mainly between the early 1900s and the late 1920s). The remainder of the images included in this article are standard photographic formats contained in the Hardijzer Photographic Research Collection (HPRC) or obtained from Friedel Hansen and Rosa Swanepoel.

From the dawn of civilization, religion, with its extraordinary and powerful influence, has played a significant role in the broader realm of human existence. Today, religion remains the lifeblood of many societies all over the world.

These living faiths, in turn, provide us with insights into the lives and rituals of those immersed in their particular religion.

In order for society to live out its religious convictions, places to worship and perform religious rituals came into existence, resulting in some of the world’s most intricate and ostentatious architecture.

Compared to the rest of the world, South Africa has a significantly younger religious history.

Some conflicting information seems to exist on the earliest 'western' religious establishments in South Africa. It has been suggested that the first religious complex to be built in South Africa was around 1678 in Cape Town – the cornerstone of which was laid by Willem Adriaan van der Stel.

Pretoria’s first religious building was erected during 1857, resulting in a gap of some 180 years between South Africa and Pretoria’s first religious complex!

In comparison, Pretoria’s religious history seems almost insignificant considering the above, yet early photographic images produced of Pretoria’s...

The primary purpose of this article is to introduce the first known catalogue of Anglo-Boer war stereo photographs produced by the American based Keystone View Company (Version 1 – as at April 2022 - click here to view).

At this early stage it also needs to be pointed out that Keystone View Company published their stereoviews in the United Kingdom under the name “The Fine-Art Photographers’ Publishing Co”. The numbering convention and titles applied for these Anglo-Boer war images were the same as for the views published under the Keystone brand. Whilst the Keystone View Company (Keystone) is the main theme of this article, the catalogue attached would be inclusive of the British published views.

This article is the third in a series on South African Anglo-Boer war stereo photographs, or stereoviews, produced by American based entities.

The first in the series was on the Anglo-Boer war stereo photographs produced by Underwood & Underwood (click here to view), whilst the second in the series was on the Kilburn company (click here to view). All three these entities, Keystone included, were stiff competition to each other – also during the Anglo-Boer war period.

Underwood & Underwood was established during 1881 and ceased their activities 39 years later (during 1920), whilst Kilburn was established during 1865. They discontinued their activities 44 years later (during 1909).

After having made some crucial adaptations in order to survive the industry, Keystone became the longest survivor of the three American entities. Keystone was established during 1892, with...