lot 21
21 •(ETHNOGRAPHY--NIGERIAN TRIBES)
A large and in-depth album containing 600 ethnographic studies documenting Southern and Southwestern Nigerian tribespeople, their rituals, prisoners, and day-to-day activities.
Included are numerous well-captured portraits and profiles of both men and women, displaying an array of complex hairstyles, ritualistic scarification, and some portraying cannibals with filed teeth; views of leisure with young boys playing physical games, elderly folk smoking, traditional musicians, and ceremonial masked dances; offerings, sacrifices, effigies of gods, and one shot of a Medicine Man; scenes of domesticity such as pottery, well-water retrieval, and a local market; and home interiors exhibiting large painted symbols and decorated walls. There are also photographs showing prisoners during meal-time and in captivity, clothed only in tattered rags. Many of the photographs include a mugshot-like numberboard partially or fully within the frame. Silver prints, the images measuring approximately 4x3 inches (10.2x7.6 cm.), and the reverse, mounted recto/verso to black pages, each image with a caption beneath, in ink. Oblong 4to, black leatherette; tied binding. Circa 1915-20
[6,000/9,000]
Some of the tribes and regions identified in the captions are the Agbasa, Olokon, Zanipodi, and Achara Village, many of which are today considered part of the Yoruba people.
