Ethiopie

1915 · 508297 — N.P. 1915. Hardcover. NEAR FINE. An extraordinary portfolio of early 20th-century photographs of Ethiopia featuring eight large-format scenes from a Coptic Orthodox wedding in addition to eight 3x5 photos of Ethiopian children. The wedding photos depict a very formal liturgical ceremony with the bride and groom in ornate robes and crowns attended by priests acolytes deacons cantors and other ecclesiastics in fine vestments carrying the sacred liturgical items including many golden crosses and a richly ornamented Holy Gospel. One photo of the long procession shows a great crowd of attendees dressed in white robes. A previous dealer's description of this porfolio speculates that the great pomp of this ceremony might indicate that it was a royal wedding perhaps even the marriage of Esther Akhnoukh and Fahmy Bey Wissa described by the English Ethnographer S. H. Leeder. But in Leeder's own account he notes that the crowns and regalia are the property of the church a communal holding and the wearing of which is the right and privilege of all baptised faithful for one day in their lives. Photos mounted on original 11x14' mattes with just a bit of rubbing and toning to the extremities one photo with a tiny dampstain to the margin otherwise all photos are FINE entirely clean and sharp. The 3x5' photos of children are mounted four to a matte. These photos show children in joyful poses particularly showcasing their hairstyles one of which includes a oder girl with a large water gourd; two of the photos show children being swarmed by flies. The phtographer is unnamed but there are a fairly limited number of possibilities. It was almost certainly purchased by Rosenberg on his Travelling fellowship around 1921 putting the date of the actual photos sometime in the previous decade. Prior to the Italian invasion in the 30's Ethiopia was not an easy place to access and was simply not a destination for European travellers making professional photo-documentations of it far less common than its neighbor Egypt in the same time period. One tempting and plausible source would be one of the photographers of the Enno Littman-led 'Deutsche Aksum Expedition' which included extensive ethnographic investigations in the course of their larger mission of investigating the archaeological sites of the Kingdom of Aksum in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. A noted Semiticist Littman lived among the Tigre people of Eritrea for a year before directing the Aksum expedition doing research for later linguistic and ethnographic publications including 'Tales Customs Names and Dirges of the Tigre Tribes' which includes ample descriptions of religious ceremony. Housed in a contemporary 11x16' portfolio sold by C. Roberson of London half black cloth over printed paste paper and ties to all three sides with moderate wear to the extremities and French liquor labels to the endpapers. With owner's label to the rear cover ex-libris Louis Conrad Rosenberg a noted architect whose 171 etchings and architectural illustrations and renderings have been archived in the University of Oregon Special Collections Division. After serving in the US Army and American Expeditionary Force during WWI Rosenberg joined the factulty of the University of Oregon. He and his wife Marie Louise Allen of Portland took advantage of a Traveling Fellowship granted by the UO and travelled extensively throughout the Mediterranean and the Levant for 2 years beginning in 1920. N.P. hardcover