[NEW CALEDONIA] Archive of original photographs taken by a German geologist, documenting mining, interactions with indigenous people, and the landscape in New Caledonia’s North Province, 1930-31.

A$1,850 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Group of 58 (fifty-eight) gelatin silver print photographs, in uniform 80 x 110 mm format, all neatly mounted on green paper backing sheets, 140 x 210 mm, each with the meticulous cataloguing of the photographer in the form of typed information in German, including in the upper margin a main heading Neu-Kaledonien and a sub-heading, and in the lower margin the photographer s initials J. O. H. , a sequence number, date (either 1930 or 1931), and a main caption detailing the location and subject matter of the image; the archive has been exceptionally well preserved: all of the prints are sharp and unfaded and the mounts are likewise virtually flawless. The photographs in this substantial and potentially significant archive were taken by a very competent non-professional photographer who was evidently a German-speaking geologist connected with the mining industry; the images have quite possibly never been published. The archive documents many places and activities in New Caledonia s North Province on Grande Terre, around the Diahot and Koumac Rivers (Arama, Pemboa, Ouegoa, Gomen, Pano, Bonde, Uebla, etc.), and includes many photographs of the Kanak population (a pilou-pilou dance, the great chief Ao of Pemboa with his family, tending yam crops, building the church at Bonde, etc.); geological formations (prominent colonist Victor Weiss is identified in one of these shots); the Mérétrix copper-silver-lead mine on the Diahot; and an expedition to the Upper Diahot, using Javanese se

• Binding: Hardcover

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