This month we have five collections which have gone up onto the EAP website. These are EAP177, EAP326, EAP212, EAP507 and EAP556. These collections come from Laos, Peru, Russia and Indonesia.

EAP177 and EAP326 both digitised photographic collections from Buddhist monasteries in Luang Prabang. Coming from more than 20 distinct monastery collections these images provide a unique view of over 120 years of monastic life. The photographs show rituals, pilgrimages, portraits, history and social life. They also document historic and political events including French colonialism, civil war, the Indochina and Vietnam wars, revolution and socialist rule. This rich collection was created because of a particular inclination towards photography that had been introduced very early by the French. It was practiced in the Royal court where young princes would learn about it and take it with them when they were ordained as monks and became abbots of the various monasteries.

EAP177/3/1/5 Image 181

Together the projects have discovered 33,933 photographs from 21 monasteries in Luang Prabang. These have been digitised and safely stored. Most of the original photographs (prints and negatives) are now stored in specially designed wooden archive cabinets.

EAP326/8/1 Image 55

EAP507 digitised a large amount of material from the historical archive of San Marcos National University in Peru. The project digitised approximately 26,000 pages of theses and dissertations dating from 1857-1920 as well as four historical documents dating from 1551-1821. San Marcos National University is the oldest university in Peru, holding important documents on several scarcely studied aspects of Peruvian and Hispanic American history. As well as digitising the collections they were also catalogued, making available for researchers an important part of the remaining archival material held in the Historical Archive of the San Marcos National University.

EAP507/3/2/3 Image 9

EAP556 digitised books related to the Ural Old Believers. In the second half of the 17th century, Patriarch Nikon of the Russian Orthodox Church reformed church ceremonies and text books. The purpose of the reform was the convergence of Russian, Greek, Belorussian and Ukrainian cultures. This led to a rupture where the Old Russian traditions and Russian society were split into two camps, supporters of reforms "Niconiane" and its opponents “Old Believers”.

From the end of the 17th century the Ural region of Russia became a place of residence for Old Believers who had fled from the persecutions of the authorities in the central areas of the country. From 1974 to 2002 a group of workers from Ural State University organised expeditions to settlements from the Volga region to Western Siberia. During these expeditions, around 6,000 items related to the Old Believers were found. The project succeeded in creating an inventory of 1,975 old printed books and 3,876 manuscripts. 35 of the books were digitised, these date from the 16th-19th century.

EAP556/1/1/1 Image 9

EAP212 digitised family collections of manuscripts in the insular region of the former Butonese Sultanate, which is now included in the territory of South-Eastern Sulawesi Province, Indonesia.
The project digitised almost 100 manuscripts from six collections. These Butonese manuscripts are mostly written in Arabic and Wolio languages. A few others were written in Buginese and Dutch languages. They date from the 17th to the 20th century. The contents are varied, among them are genealogies, correspondence (official letters, contract letters, personal letters), and accounts of traditional ceremonies. Other manuscripts contain Islamic and Sufism teaching, Islamic mysticism, Arabic grammar, Al-Qur'an, language, traditional maritime knowledge of sea navigation, Butonese traditional laws (taxation, customary law, maritime law, Islamic law), traditional medicine, and divination manuals. These documents are an important source for the study of language, literature, Islam, politics, culture and society in Indonesia.

EAP212/2/6 Image 9

Check back next month to see what else has been added!

You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.

 

To mark International Women's Day we have a guest blog by Yasmine Chemali, grant holder of EAP644. The blog gives us a fascinating insight to photography of the Middle East and Lydie Bonfils - a very inspiring woman.

Marie-Lydie Cabanis Bonfils (1837-1918)

An attempt at photograph identification

Photography arrived in the Middle East in 1839, the same year that Louis-Jacques- Mandé Daguerre produced his first daguerreotype in France[1]. Félix Bonfils, a French printer who migrated from France to Beirut along with his family in 1867, established one of the first professional photographic studios in the Middle East. Very little is known about women photographers in the region. Félix’s wife, Lydie Bonfils, can be considered the first professional woman photographer in the region.

This blog will focus on the Bonfils production and especially on the photographs that could be attributed to Lady Bonfils. The Fouad Debbas Collection, based in Beirut, Lebanon, is the most important private collection of photographs and archives of the 19^th and of the first half of the 20^th centuries currently conserved in the Middle East, with approximately 40 000 photographs of the region. EAP 644 is currently focusing on digitization and assessment of the Debbas Bonfils collection[2].

Much has been written so far about the Bonfils family and their photographic establishment in Lebanon. From the moment they moved from France (Gard) to Beirut, Lebanon, until the establishment was sold to Abraham Guiragossian in 1907, Félix (father), Lydie (mother) and Adrien (son) produced one of the largest bodies of photographic work in the Middle East. Here is their story through Fouad Debbas’s archives including his personal notes, his collection of approximately 3000 original photographs, and other documents such as interviews of Bonfils descendants thirty-five years ago.

The Bonfils family studio

 
Fig.1: photography of Bonfils studio in Beirut, private collection, documentation of Fouad Debbas, TFDC.

In 1857, Paul-Félix Bonfils (1831-1885) from Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort (Gard, France) married Marie-Lydie Cabanis (1837-1918) from Congénies (Gard). They had two children, Félicité-Sophie in 1858 and Paul Félix Adrien in 1861.

In 1860, a French military expedition was sent to Lebanon to calm down the Druze uprising and the massacre of Christian communities. Félix Bonfils, aged 29, was part of the expedition. After his return to France, Félix was enchanted and kept telling stories to his wife who dreamed of visiting the Orient. A few years later, the young Adrien got severely sick from whooping cough and the doctor recommended a trip across the seas. With no hesitation, Lydie took her son to Beirut. Back in France, Lydie was transformed and urged her husband to move to Beirut and to change the family business to photography. At that time, Félix Bonfils was the head of a printing office in Alais for heliogravure, a process he had learned from Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor. Trained in photography, the Bonfils family set up in Beirut in 1867, opened a photographic studio (Fig.1) and developed branches in Cairo and Alexandria as well as a business correspondence with a New-York agency. The beginnings were difficult especially because of the heavy photographic material but they worked hard and travelled all around the Middle East covering Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Greece. The studio produced literally tens of thousands of prints and lantern slides forming one of the most extensive visual anthologies of the Middle East material culture. Already in 1871, in a letter to the Société Française de Photographie, Félix reported having taken a large number of photographs of Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Greece, views of Jerusalem and several panoramas. He mentions that his stock comprises 15 000 prints and 9000 stereo views from 590 negatives[3]. Bonfils’s anthological structure was divided into five distinct photographic sections, following the outline of the firm’s 1876 catalogue[4]: 1) Egypt, 2) Palestine / the Holy Land, 3) Syria, 4) Constantinople and Greece, 5) the Costumes/ Genre, Scenes and Ethnographic Types of the Orient. Prints were offered in three different sizes (18x24, 24x30, 30x40 cm) as well as stereoscopic views.

Although it seems that Félix Bonfils has produced almost all the early work, it is still very difficult to identify the different makers and attribute the images to any of the family members. While we know Lydie looked after the administration, it seems she also did some portraits. Lydie remained in Beirut to run the family business when Félix set up in Alais in 1876 for the publication of a series of albums titled “Souvenirs d’Orient”, sold to order through his agents in Paris, London, Switzerland and in the US. In 1878, Adrien came back to Beirut to help his father – he had been studying in France: the company became F. Bonfils et Cie[5]. Adrien was 17 and took the responsibilities of photography, including the numerous and laborious trips around the region, whereas his father took care of the promotion and of the business administration. In Alais, Félix had created a phototype studio in 1880 and died there in 1885. La Maison Bonfils continued to flourish after his death under the directions of his wife Lydie and his son Adrien. Traditionally, all photographs signed Bonfils were attributed to Félix, but it is now clear that both Lydie and Adrien contributed to the firm’s pictorial output. Specific authorship, however, is at best very speculative…

Furthermore, the establishment also employed an unknown number of unidentified assistants, among them George Sabungi or Abraham Guiragossian, who were also active in enlarging the stock of negatives. A catalogue published in the mid 1880’s states: “Our employees are constantly travelling in order to renew our negatives in accordance with every latest development in photographic art. Thus our views are known throughout the world and justly appreciated for their perfect execution and their permanence.”[6]

In 1979, Roger Bonfils, son of Adrien, reminded his father telling him stories about their family business[7]. As for fixing photography, eggs were largely used: many women spent entire days to separate egg yolks and egg whites. Egg whites were used in the albumin process, whereas egg yolks were salted and sent in barrels from Beirut to Alais because they were used in the glove factory. Lydie Bonfils would have declared being evacuated on the deck of the U.S.S. Des Moines leaving Beirut in 1916: “I do not want to smell another egg again!”[8]

It seems that Lydie had decided that mixing albumen for her husband and son was not enough, and apparently got involved in portraits and costume studies in the Beirut studios. Descendants have confirmed that she worked in the family's Beirut studio for some time after her son abandoned the trade in the early 1900s.

There is evidence too that she ranged more widely. In Brummana, a member of the Maksad family told of "Lady Bonfils" stopping a Druze shaikh to pose for her one morning, just after the outbreak of the First World War[9]. Reverend Samuel Manning in his book Those Holy Fields: Palestine illustrated by Pen and Pencil, published in 1874 in London cites many of the book’s engravings were from photographs by “Madame Bonfils of Beyrout.”[10] Due to social conventions in the Middle East, it is presumed that Lydie made the photographs of female subject. “Madame Bonfils” is also mentioned by traveller Abbé Antoine Raboisson in his book En Orient published in Paris in 1886; she would have prepared the Beirut studio for some of the pictures he took.[11]

At the turn of the century, with the apparition of Kodak (1888) and the decline of professional photography, Adrien abandoned the family business to become hotel manager in Brumanna, Mount Lebanon. In 1899-1900, he constructed the Villa des Chênes and moved in with his wife, Marielie Saalmüller. Lydie took up the reins of the Maison Bonfils in Beirut, assisted by Abraham Guiragossian, among others.

Fig.2: cover page of 1907 catalogue of “Vve Lydie Bonfils”, TFDC.

She published the Catalogue général des vues photographiques de l’Orient, Beyrouth in 1907, where it is noted that there were branches of the firm in Jerusalem and Baalbek. The catalogue is signed “Vve L. Bonfils”(Fig.2). It seems that Madame Bonfils continued to photograph until her evacuation from Beirut by the United States navy in 1916[12]. In 1909, Madame Bonfils formed a partnership with A. Guiragossian who eventually bought their archives – studio and all its content – after Lydie died in 1918. Guiragossian signed his photographs “Lydie Bonfils photographe, Beyrouth (Syrie) successeur A. Guiragossian”, inscribing himself in total legacy of Maison Bonfils.

Portrait of Lydie Bonfils by her descendants based on accounts and interviews from 1979[13]

Fig.3: portrait of Lydie Bonfils, private collection, documentation of Fouad Debbas, TFDC.

In 1979, Roger Bonfils remembers: “Grandmother Lydie was visiting us in Brumana every summer. She left Beirut for two or three months and spent some time in the mountains. She was quite austere and strict but we loved her very much. (Fig.3)

One day, my little sister Marcelle entered her bedroom very impressed because she saw grandma with no teeth and she cried. Then grandmother told her to go pray hard so that the Good Lord would give grandma her teeth back. Marcelle prayed very hard and when she came back she was so delighted to see her prayer fulfilled!

Grandmother said also that when you were about to commit nonsense, that was under devil’s influence and that you should kick him to chase him. One day, while we were sitting in classroom, we heard our private teacher screaming of pain: that was Marcelle who was bravely chasing the devil!” 

Marcelle Pinatton relates: “My grandmother was someone! She was generous and very religious. Once, she heard the Salvation Army that the poor were in need, and so she gave all her jewels, and every time she had a visit from poor people in Beirut, she would offer them clothes and food. Poor came by boat to my grandmother. My uncle who was Vice-Consul of France in Beirut found once a piece of paper on which it was written: “Go to Madame Bonfils, she feeds you and gives you clothes, but you have to listen to her, she tells about the Good Lord.”

Lydie Bonfils, the first professional woman photographer in the Middle East and her role in the Oriental imagery

There were very few aristocratic ladies of the last century such as Marguerite Cameron and few others who were amateurs or artists but Marie-Lydie Cabanis Bonfils is considered the first women photographer in the Middle East to take studio portraits.

According to Mrs. Pinatton, Lydie Bonfils could not have been travelling and taking pictures of all the sites and people outside. Adrien Bonfils told his children once that the lepers had threatened him: “you give us so much or else we come and touch you”[14]. Adrien got himself out of this situation when he took his gun in order to make them step backwards. That is why Lydie could have never gone there and done that work.

But it is obvious she took several photographs in the Beirut studio, especially for the costumes series featuring women - Oriental women being more inclined to pose if the operator were a woman herself. 

No photograph was signed with a woman’s name. The Dalil Beirut, the Guide of Beirut (1882) notes the existence of a photo studio entitled “Studio Madame Philippe Sabunji”[15], proving that his Danish wife, Rikke, assisted Philippe Sabunji in his photographic production. A postcard, conserved in the Fouad Debbas Collection shows an inscription written in upper case Latin letters: “Photographie Peintre Octavia Kova.”[16] This studio with a woman’s name was established in the Gemmayzeh area in Beirut in 1920. This is evidence that women were involved in the production of photography at that time in Beirut, although they were not acknowledged or credited. This makes the task of tracing women photographers even more difficult. The identification of Lydie Bonfils photographs in this article is subject to interpretation and engages only the present author. In regard to the different catalogues of Maison Bonfils and studying attentively the Bonfils’s signatures, it appears that female portraits are barely signed and their numbering could be attributed to a feminine hand (Fig.4).

 
Fig.4: detail of signature of Fig.7

Recent studies of women photography depict women photographers not as mere assistants in the production but as agents of their own work.[17] Lydie Bonfils may be considered as a pioneer in photography, but the Fouad Debbas Collection comprises also a unique portrayal of Lebanon accounted by the Comtesse de Perthuis between 1852-55 and 1860-62. Through her travel journal[18], found by Debbas in a bookstore in Lyon in 1990, Madame de Perthuis, a French aristocrat, offers us an account, sketches and photographs of her journey through Lebanon and its surroundings in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Both women, the Comtesse de Perthuis and Marie-Lydie Bonfils, may be seen as having produced Orientalist accounts that tend to look at the region through an exoticizing lens. Lydie Bonfils’s Bedouin women were surely meant to conform to preconceived Western stereotypes[19]. For a long time, women have been represented as “objects of vision”, as “sights” designed to “flatter” predominantly male spectators[20]. 

In the European travel literature of the 19^th and the 20^th centuries, the non-European female world is figured as a sexual and romantic desire in the age of the expansion of industrialization and urbanization[21]. The representation of Orient and of the oriental subject is exotic in Bonfils’s photographs.

Fig.5: Group of Bedouins from Jericho, albumin print, Maison Bonfils, ca. 1876-85. TFDC_520_034_0644.

Bedouin subjects in a desert-like context never appear dignified; they do not look straight into the viewfinder: they rest against a palm tree décor with papier-mâché stones, reminding of a composition by Delacroix (Fig.5). Those orientalist stereotypes inscribe the Middle-Eastern women as passive. In Bonfils’ lens, the peasant is passive. There is also a certain falsehood in the photographs of types and characters, made in non-authentic studio situations with “models” appearing in several images with different costumes and under totally different identifications (Fig.6 and Fig.7). It is very likely that certain veils of female subjects hide the same sitter[22].

 
Fig.6: Young woman from Lebanon, albumin print, attributed to Lydie Bonfils (?), ca. 1876-85. TFDC_520_002_0257.

Fig.7: Woman from Nablus, albumin print, attributed to Lydie Bonfils (?), ca. 1876-85. TFDC_139_026_0619.

Orientalist photographs by Lydie Bonfils were produced for commercial purposes in order to satisfy the expectations of a European clientele. As the leading merchants of Oriental imagery in Europe, Bonfils’s images functioned within the same perceptual logic as the lithographs with perfectly arranged compositions in terms of perspective and of construction: no extraneous elements were left out in the background.[23] The Bonfils assembled signs of an exotic and mysterious place. They developed a photographic genre in which scenes are artificial and poses fake. This family business aimed at producing high quality prints, this is why they insert themselves into a canonical historical lineage of photography, through the figures of Niepce, Daguerre and Talbot stamped at the back of their cabinet cards[24]. 

 This project is now online.

Yasmine Chemali

Manager of The Fouad Debbas Collection

Beirut, Lebanon.

---

 

[1] The first daguerreotype of Beirut, dated 1839, is attributed to Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804-1892) and was published in “Excursions Daguerriennes”.  Fouad Debbas, Beirut, our memory, an illustrated tour in the old city from 1880 to 1930, Folios, 1986, p.9. See also: Fouad Debbas, “Travellers in Lebanon”, Archeology and History in Lebanon, Twelfth Issue, autumn 2000, pp.50-68.

[2] http://eap.bl.uk/database/overview_project.a4d?projID=EAP644;r=26362

[3] Séance du 1er décembre 1871, Bulletin de la Société Française de Photographie, XVII, 1871, p.282.

[4] Catalogue des vues photographiques de l’Orient, photographiées et éditées par Bonfils Félix, Alais (Gard), Imprimerie et Lithographie A. Brugueirolle et Compagnie, 1876.

[5] A new catalogue is then published between 1883, year of Bruxelles International Exhibition whose medallion figures on the cover page, and 1885, death of Félix Bonfils. The following illustrations of the present article are attributed prior this 1883-85 catalogue.

[6] Catalogue des vues photographiques de l’Orient, F. Bonfils & Cie, à Beyrouth (Syrie) & Alais (Gard), no date (between 1883 and 1885 according to Fouad Debbas). See also: Carney E.S. Gavin, The image of the East, Photographs by Bonfils, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982, p.16.

[7] Roger Bonfils, Des pionniers de la photographie, Souvenirs de famille, December 1979, personal archives of Fouad Debbas, The Fouad Debbas Collection, Beirut, Lebanon.

[8] idem

[9] ref: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198306/the.bonfils.story-a.special.section.htm

[10] Robert A. Sobieszek and Carney E.S. Gavin, Remembrances of the Near East: the photographs of Bonfils, 1867-1907. May 23 - September 1, 1980 International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House.

[11] Abbé A. Raboisson, En Orient, Paris, Librairie Catholique de l’Oeuvre de Saint-Paul, 1886, t.2, p.315

[12] In December 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered in war besides Germany; French people living in Lebanon became enemies of the regime. Lydie Bonfils and her family left Beirut for Cairo where Adrien stayed for five years as a restaurant and hotel manager before he could return back to Brummana and eventually leave Lebanon for Nice in France. His mother, Lydie Bonfils passed away in 1918 in Cairo where she is buried.

[13] The interviews were made by the Harvard Semitic Museum team who was doing some research on the Bonfils family and by Fouad Debbas as well. The interviews were recorded by Elizabeth Carella who was at that time Chief Photographer at the Harvard Semitic Museum and, along with Father Carney E.S. Gavin. Mrs. Marcelle Pinatton was interviewed on April 21, 1979 at her home in Paris, and Mr Roger Bonfils in December 1979 in Royat, France. Fouad Debbas has kept traces of those accounts and interviews in its personal documentation and collection.

[14] April 1979, Interview of the HSM team, ibid.

[15] Fouad Debbas, Des photographes à Beyrouth, 1840-1918, Marval, Paris, 2001, p.48.

[16] A postcard representing her photographic studio in 1920 can be seen in Debbas, op.cit., 1986, p.190.

[17] Yasmine Nachabe, Marie al-Khazen’s photographs of the 1920s and 1930s, a thesis submitted to McGill University, November 2011, p.70.

[18] Voyages en Orient 1853-1855 and 1860-1862, Journal de la Comtesse de Perthuis, manuscrit inédit découvert par Fouad Debbas, Dar An-Nahar, Beirut, 2007.

[19] Yasmine Nachabe, Refracted Gazes: A Woman Photographer during Mandate Lebanon, Essay, Altre Modernità/Other Modernities, Università degli Studi du Milano, N.8 – 11, 2012, p.3.

[20] Berger J. 1973, Ways of Seeing, Viking Press, New York, p.74 in Nachabe, 2012, ibid.

[21] This aspect is particularly revealed in Gustave Flaubert’s texts in which the Orient is not only eroticized but also feminized. REF. Nachabe, 2012, op,cit., p.6

[22] See in The Fouad Debbas Collection: TFDC_520_029_0648.

[23] Nachabe, 2011, op.cit., p.62.

[24] See in The Fouad Debbas Collection:  TFDC_300_003.

 EAP now has over one million images available online!

We have four new online collections this month which has taken the total number of images available in our collections over the one million mark; EAP201, EAP279, EAP295, EAP529. These collections come from India, Lesotho in Southern Africa, Grenada and Mongolia.

EAP201 surveyed and digitised collections of Hakku Patras in Andhra Pradesh, one of the 28 states of India. Hakku Patras are documents which grant folk performers and artisans the right to carry out certain activities in specific villages and areas.  These performers are prohibited from performing in a region not assigned to them. Within their region they carry out folk performances and perform religious rituals, for providing these services they are paid renumerations (katnam).

EAP201/1/5/8 Image 1

The project found the details for many Hakku Patras held by nomadic and non-nomadic performing communities. The documents are inscribed on copper plates or written paper. The contents of Hakku Patras contain the name of the village, performing community, date of the sanctioning of the grant and the form of the performance.

EAP279 digitised the Matsieng Royal Archives, Lesotho. The Royal Family of Lesotho has been based there continuously since the founding of Matsieng, which has been a 'royal hub' of the Basotho kingship and chieftainship. The documents cover material dating from the early 19th century. The archives include records of historical, political, legal and economic significance.

EAP279/1/2/34 Image 159

The project digitised two main collections of documents. The first are Bewis (Bewys) records dating from 1942-1973, these records are certificates of ownership which were issued by chiefs to animal owners as a proof that they are the rightful owners of their animals. When acquiring or disposing of an animal the person had to apply for bewis from his chief. Even when a person was selling wool, mohair, skin or hides he had to have a bewis. The chief on his part had to satisfy himself that the animal had not been stolen. Bewis were issued for cows, horses, donkeys, sheep and goats as proof of ownership. It was mandatory for owners of animals to have bewis.

The second series of documents relates to the chieftaincy. These records include correspondence between the office of the paramount chief and the principal and ward chiefs, correspondence between the paramount chief and the resident commissioner, complaints between the chiefs and complaints between chiefs and the public.

EAP295 digitised the unique historical archives of Grenada. The material provides a micro-vision of how Grenada was transformed in the late eighteenth century by imperial conflicts, the expansion of plantation slavery and revolutionary politics. The two main sources of records are from Government House and the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court records reveal the multi-racial alliances and conflicts that marked slave society while the Government House correspondence shows the local negotiations and conflicts that shaped the prolonged transition to a free society during the mid-nineteenth century.

During Hurricane Ivan in 2004 the Grenada Public library lost part of its roof and the Government House correspondence became displaced and out of order. The project had to reorder this material chronologically before digitising it. 

The material at the Supreme Court Registry was far better preserved than at Government House as it was relatively unaffected by Hurricane Ivan. Loose-leaf documents previously identified as connected to the eighteenth century French Deeds formed the initial focus of in situ digitisation in the Supreme Court Registry. Digitisation also covered some of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registers.

EAP295/1/1/1 Image 3

EAP529 set out to digitise the 19-20th century collection of Buddhist Manuscripts from Dambadarjaa monastery in Mongolia. The communist purges from 1937-1938 saw the destruction of many monasteries in Mongolia. The Dambadarjaa monastery, one of the first three monasteries in Mongolia which was built between 1761 and 1765, was reduced to two temples and two shrines from an original total of 25 buildings.

Today, what remains of the monastery is subject to structural aging and is in a critical condition since no repair works have been undertaken since the 1930s. One of the temples holds around 1,500 Buddhist manuscripts and ritual items used in the religious service for the public. All the manuscripts are subject to damage by mice, temperature fluctuations and fire.

The project focused on 200 of the most old and fragile Buddhist Manuscripts dating from 1860-1920s. All 200 manuscripts were repackaged in fire-proof and acid-free containers, while 51 of the manuscripts were selected for digitisation and can now be viewed online.

EAP529/1/1 Image 3

Check back next month to see what else has been added!

You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.

 
Many of you may realise that it is Chinese New Year – the Year of the Horse. It is also the Lunar New Year for Mongolians, known as Tsaagan Sar. So it seemed appropriate for today’s blog to include images of horses that make up part of the Mongolian photographic archive EAP264.

For a nomadic culture, the horse is of paramount importance and it is very hard when thinking of Mongolia, not to visualise herdsmen riding across the Steppes on their sturdy steeds. The rider being almost motionless as the horse travels at great speed.

EAP264/1/8/6/18 A young herdsman tending a herd of cattle on a pasture (location unknown) [1940s]

The only truly wild horse (known as the Przewalski or Takhi breed) can be found in Mongolia and is known for having short legs and averages 13 hands in height.

EAP264/1/7/9/62 Takhi - a wild horse grazing on a plain [1930s]

There have also been attempts to rear cross-breeds and the photographs below show what magnificent animals they can be.

EAP264/1/8/6/134 A horse farm raising cross-breed horses, Ulaanbaatar [1930s]

EAP264/1/8/6/135 A horse farm raising cross-breed horses, Ulaanbaatar [1930s]

The horse is an essential part of the traditional economy for herders. Not only is it the main form of transport (though now often replaced by motorbikes) but it also provides important produce.

EAP264/1/8/6/69 A herdsman helping his wife in milking a mare (location unknown) [1940s]

During the summer and autumn months, mares’ milk is fermented to produce the slightly alcoholic drink ‘airag’ - a very popular and refreshing seasonal beverage. It holds a special place in society and is regularly passed around during gatherings, often when songs about horses are sung. It is extremely impolite to refuse a sip of it when offered.

Horse-racing is one of the most popular competitive sports and it is often done during the summer Naadam festivities. The jockeys are boys and girls aged about 8-11, and the distances they cover depends on the age of the horse. Two year old horses will race about 15km while six and seven year olds will race up to 30km.

EAP264/1/3/4/98 A jockey boy-a winning rider near the grandstand in the Naadam field at Yarmag [1951]

It is gruelling for both the horses and the jockeys. The winning jockey is named ‘leader of ten thousand’ (tümmy ekh) and they are offered a bowl of airag, often also sprinkled on the jockey and horse as an act of good luck. For the horse that comes last in the two year old category all is not lost as it has a song sung to it.

EAP264/1/3/2/8 The winner-jockey boy tastes airag-fermented mare’s milk at the Naadam festivities [1950]

The horse is the most revered out of all herded animals. This can be seen in the traditional game ‘shagai’ which uses four sheep ankle bones a bit like dice. The way the bones land represents either a camel, goat, sheep or horse.  If the bone lands with the concave sides showing, it represents either a goat or camel and is considered unlucky, if it settles on a convex side it represents a sheep or horse and they are deemed lucky. And of course if you toss ‘four horses’ you will have the best luck of all.

EAP would like to wish you all good fortune during this Year of the Horse.

Happy new year from the Endangered Archives Programme! To celebrate the start of 2014 we have four new online collections available with over one hundred thousand images. Two of these collections come from India with the other two collections originating in China and Indonesia.

The first collection is EAP143, this project preserved Shui manuscripts in China. These are considered to be one of the few remaining types of documents in China that are written in a hieroglyphic style.

The manuscripts give a rare insight into Shui culture as well as being useful for studying history, anthropology, folklore and even palaeography in general. Shui manuscripts are written, kept and taught by the native priesthood. The manuscripts are used in rituals, as well as in teaching the next generation of priests. The contents of the manuscripts cover a variety of topics including Shui knowledge on astronomy, geography, folklore, religion, ethics, philosophy, art and history.

The project surveyed about twenty villages in Libo County and a selection of approximately 600 Shui manuscripts was chosen and then digitised; these are now available to view online.

EAP143/2/118 – Image 9

EAP208 set out to digitise palm leaf manuscripts from northern Kerala, India. These documents, which are in a fragile and endangered condition, contain several insights into areas of knowledge such as ecology, agriculture, science, art (the arts) and spirituality.

The project was successful in digitising 275 manuscripts with over 50,000 images.

EAP208/15/37 – Image 21

EAP281 located and identified Lepcha manuscripts in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim in India. The Lepcha people are local to Sikkim but represent a minority of the population in Sikkim and neighbouring areas. The culture and language has been diminishing for over a century as many young Lepcha give preference to learning English or Nepalese and are less interested in their traditions.

The Lepcha people have their own indigenous script which dates back to the 18th century. The manuscripts reveal the earliest stages of Lepcha literary heritage. The oldest handwritten materials that have so far been identified were written in the second half of the 19th century. Many of the manuscripts contain texts of a Buddhist nature, a smaller number of texts reflect older Lepcha traditions. The project successfully digitised 40 manuscripts and located many more.

EAP281/1/5 Image 9

EAP329 digitised private collections of Acehnese manuscripts located in Pidie and Aceh Besar regencies. These had been surveyed by a previous pilot project EAP229. The content of the manuscripts is a part of Acehnese history with regards to lifestyle, the kingdom of Aceh, and the war against colonialism. They also relate to Islamic knowledge and Islamic mysticism (Sufism) and its order. The project successfully digitised 483 manuscripts with over 46,000 images.

EAP329/1/17 Image 1

Check back next month to see what else has been added!

You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.

This month we have had five new projects go up online, including EAP139 the photographic collection of Liberian president William V.S. Tubman, EAP333 parish archives from Peru and EAP334 Wolof Ajami manuscripts from Senegal. There are also two collections from Indonesia, EAP276 Ambon manuscripts and EAP280 Old Javanese and Old Sundanese palm-leaf manuscripts.

EAP139 preserved the photographic archive of William V.S. Tubman who was Liberia’s longest running president (1944-1971). Tubman’s presidency was marked by great changes in the economy, politics and social environment of Liberia and the African continent. The Tubman photographic collection contains over 5,500 photographs from the period of his presidency; including inspections, formal receptions and inaugurations. There are also photographs of state visits to other countries in Africa, as well as to Europe and the United States of America. Below is a photograph of President Tubman in 1954 riding in a motorcade with then Vice-President Richard Nixon.

EAP139/1/26 – Image 130

EAP333 collected and preserved parish archives in the Huacho diocese in Peru. The project digitised baptism, marriage and burial registers from thirteen parishes, dated from the 16th century up to 1940. The rest of the ecclesiastical documents are divided into three categories: confraternities, pastoral inspections, and curates. These contain records of petitions, visitations to parishes by bishops or their representatives and documents related to administrative or litigious matters.

Below is an example of one of the records included in the curates series, it is of a complaint made by the interim priest of a parish, Antonio Meléndez Méndez, against the inspector Francisco Cuadros, the mayor Melchor Dávila and the trustee Manuel Amaya for their behaviour in using the cemetery as an enclosure for three hundreds pigs.

EAP333/1/3/487 Image 1

EAP334 preserved Wolof Ajami manuscripts in Senegal. Ajami is a term applied when Arabic script is used to write African languages. The project team successfully digitised 5,494 pages, copying 29 manuscripts from 15 collections. The manuscripts primarily consist of Wolofal (Wolof Ajami) materials written by the members of the Muridiyya Sufi order founded in Senegal in 1883.

EAP334/8/1 – Image 163

EAP276 digitised 182 manuscripts and lithographs from the Indonesian islands of Ambon and Haruku, these covered a variety of topics such as genealogies, epic tales, poetry, prayers, sermons, and official documents.

EAP276/11/1 - Image 6

EAP280 preserved rare Old Javanese and Old Sundanese palm leaf manuscripts from Ciburuy in West Java, Indonesia.  The manuscripts appear to date from the 15th to 17th centuries, and cover a range of subjects, including pre-Islamic religion, poetry, and historiography.

EAP280/1/2/5 – image 5

Check back next month to see what else has been added!

You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.

This month we have had another six projects go up online, containing over 100,000  images. These projects were EAP054, EAP264, EAP265, EAP503, EAP531 and EAP548.

EAP054 digitised items from Jacques Tousselle’s Cameroonian photographic studio. He was a photographer who worked in Mbouda, West Cameroon. His main business was photographing individual portraits created for identity cards, though he also took family portraits and other scenes. The black and white photograph industry of Cameroon effectively came to an end after 1998 with the introduction of new identity cards. These were issued with instant photographs, removing the largest custom of rural photographers. The project digitised some 20,000 negatives and preserved them for future research. The archive shows some fascinating images and represents a record of life in this area from the 1970s to the 1980s.

EAP054/1/21 – Image 60

EAP548 is a pilot project which digitised narrative and ritual texts, paintings and other performance related material belonging to the Buchen of Pin Valley, India.
The Buchen are performers of specialist rituals, travelling actors and disciples of the 14th-15th century ‘crazy saint’ Thangtong Gyalpo. They reside in the culturally Tibetan Pin Valley in Spiti, North India. Buchen households possess individual ‘archives’, collections of written story texts, texts of exorcism/healing rituals, thangkas and other ritual paraphernalia. This project surveyed all active and dormant Buchen households and produced a report of their archival holdings. It also surveyed performance related objects such as masks, costumes, statues and musical instruments. A sample of digital images of these items is now available to view on the EAP website.

EAP548/1/2/2 – Image 1

EAP531 is another pilot project which surveyed manuscripts of the Cham people in Vietnam. The Champa kingdom was eliminated by the Viet in 1720, though their culture remains in the surviving large communities of Cham people in Vietnam. The project surveyed some of these communities along with archives and museums to discover remaining Cham manuscripts. These contain rich information about Cham customs, religious practices, literature and daily activities. Manuscripts still in existence are mainly from 50 to 150 years old. A selection of manuscripts were sent by the project and can be viewed online.

EAP531/1/2 - Image 133

EAP265 surveyed and digitised Tifinagh rock inscriptions in the Tadrart Acacus Mountains, in south western Libya. Tifinagh is a Tuareg word indicating the traditional writing still in use throughout the Sahara desert. The inscriptions are a remarkable record related to the history, both ancient and modern, of the Acacus Mountains. According to research carried out in other North African regions (i.e. Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Algeria), the age of those scripts range from the second century BC up to recent times. In contrast to what has been done elsewhere the Libyan rock scripts of the Tadrart Acacus had never been the object of systematic investigation. As a result of this project, one of the largest Tifinagh collections available so far has been recorded, creating over a thousand digital images which are now available to view on our website.

EAP265/1/51 – Image 1

EAP503 digitised notarial records from the city of Riohacha, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and the peninsula of La Guajira. These records document the region’s rich commercial and social history. They contain land and property documents, commercial records pertaining to the commercial exchanges among the Spanish, foreigners, and indigenous Guajiros, records relating to the slave trade, such as selling and purchasing of slaves as well as manumission documents (when slave owners freed their slaves). There are also wills and testaments of the most important families of the region, showing the social and political alliances existing at that time. The project also digitised ecclesiastical and notarial records in Lorica, Colombia.

EAP503/3/1/6 – Image 8

EAP264 digitised the glass plate collections of the Archives for Cinema, Photography and Sound Recording in Mongolia. Over 10,000 glass plate negatives were digitised. These negatives cover an impressively wide range of topics and contain some captivating images.

The collection has images relating to the military, public health, rural life, archaeology, prominent individuals, people who were politically repressed during the 1930s, historical documents, construction works, industrial development, Mongolia's contribution to the victory of WWII, culture, religion and politics. As the original items are fragile the digitisation allows these materials to be accessed without further damaging the glass plate negatives.

This project was recently featured in our previous blog post by Jody comparing 1930’s Mongolia with the present day, you can read this blog to find out more about this fascinating collection.

EAP264/1/8/11 – Image 57

Check back next month to see what else has been added!

You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.

Today Ulaanbaatar looks like any other capital city with its high rise buildings stretching ever upwards and its traffic either at a complete standstill or creeping along at a snail’s pace.

 

But this development has been a fairly recent one as can be seen from the captivating photographs that were digitised as part of EAP264. The images date from the 1930s to the 1950s and include various aspects of Mongolian life before the Stalinist purge of 1937-8, making this a vital resource for any historian interested in the region.

EAP264/1/9/2/73

This picture shows a different part of the capital. The Megzid Janraiseg, a two storey Tibetan style temple, towers above its neighbouring buildings and yurts (‘ger’ in Mongolian). It is part of Gandantegchinlin Monastery complex and was built in 1912/13 to house a large copper sculpture that was erected in the hope that it would improve the eyesight of the 8th Jebtsundamba (Bogd Khan) the religious ruler of the country.  Sadly the copper was smelted down in 1938 and it was not until 1996 that a replacement 26.5 metre tall sculpture restored the building to its original function.

Mongolian religious architecture can be divided into different types: ‘Khiid’ a Tibetan style of monastic complex built on a mountain side; and ‘sum’ or temple influenced by Chinese architectural aesthetics.  The ‘khüree’ refers to a national style – Ulaanbaatar previously being known as Ikh Khüree or ‘Great Camp’.

During the purge, it is estimated that 2,265 monastic buildings were destroyed and between 22,000 -35,000 people killed, 18,000 of whom were monks. Close to Ulaanbaatar stood Manzushir Khiid but only its remnants remain.

This 20th century painting by artist Jugder  shows the size of the complex and how the monastery used to look. The photograph below testifys to it having been a thriving religious centre up until the 1930s.

 

EAP264/1/9/4/64 People gathering at religious ritual in Manzushir monastery, Central Mongolia [1930s]

Other photographs within the collection illustrate how fascinating Mongolian religious architecture was. There were wood buildings that were influenced by the circular ger shape, others by Chinese architecture and then there was the most fascinating of all - a hybrid of several types put together.

EAP264/1/9/5/76 A ger style temple in Ongiin Gol monastery, Central Mongolia [1930s].

EAP264/1/9/2/100 Hyatad Sum monastery, Ulaanbaatar

EAP265/1/9/5/11 A temple in Ongiin Gol monastery, Central Mongolia [1930s]. A ger inspired upper storey on a Tibetan style building.

From the 1920s, modern buildings started being constructed in the capital,often in collaboration with soviet architects. By the 1940s, the buildings had a classical European style as can be seen by the photograph of the State Opera House designed by Gerhard Kozel and which still stands today.

EAP264/1/12/1/64 Building the State Opera House 

The State Opera House as it is today

By the 1950s Mongolia was producing its own architects and it was B. Chimid who was instrumental in the planning and design of the 20th century city. These two bird’s eye views of Sukhbaatar Square shows how the city centre has developed into the place it is today.

EAP264/1/12/3/20

But perhaps my favourite photograph that makes up the architectural collection (and there are many, many other topics to explore) is this photograph of a branch of the Mongol Bank taken in the 1930s at Yamag, very close to Ulaanbaatar – I have a rather sad feeling that it is no longer standing. 

EAP264/1/12/1/53

Do browse through the collection of EAP264 photographs, there are series on art and culture, festivals, the military, nature, religion - the list goes on and on.