Photogravures of Africa (1930)

A scarce collection of historic original photogravures of the architecture, landscape, and people of Africa. The world's second largest and second most populous continent, Africa was often referred to as "The Dark Continent" because it was largely unknown and mysterious to 19th century Europeans. This collection focuses mostly on the countries of mid-Africa, including, but not limited to, Sudan, Chad, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.

To create the portfolio of images seen here, a group of photographers traveled to Africa pre-1930 (Marc Allégret, Hugo Adolf Bernatzik, Hans Cloos Leo Frobenius, Lotte Levy-Errell, Walter Mittelholzerstrasse, Erna Pinner, Martin Rikli) and Bernatzik is denied access to the area by the British. He chose to travel on the Nile to its source, the Belgian Congo. He meets people who have never been photographed, namely the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk and the Eastern Jur. His images along with the other photographers highlighted here make up this magnificent collection or images of Nubian populations before the work of a generation of George Rodgers and those more recent, Leni Riefenstahl.