A coveted and rare album of more than 450 photographs documenting the everyday life of the Mpondo people from the 1920s to 1940s, captured by photographer Fred Clarke, will be shown by her grandson this weekend.
Dr Patrick Clarke Hutchison will be September’s guest speaker of the Border Historical Society in association with the Friends of the East London Museum.
The talk, titled “Mrs Clarke of Pondoland — the photographer (b. 1890 — d. 1948)”, will be presented in the Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer Hall at the East London Museum on Saturday.
According to the society, in the mid-1920s, Clarke, of Insimbini, Umngazana and Gosshill, photographed the Pondo people living in these areas and published 450 of her photographs in a large album, titled Native Life in Western Pondoland.
“Copies of this album are now difficult to find and are held in some of the better-known research libraries and archives around the world.
“The talk reconstructs the life of Ethel Eugene Goss, who was to become Mrs Fred Clarke,” the invitation says.
Society chair William Martinson said the album gave insight into the past.
“I am looking forward to seeing the wonderful black and white images.
“I knew that Dr Hutch owned a large album of photographs taken by his grandmother, and that a copy of the album had been handed to Princess Elizabeth on the royal tour in 1948.
“Some committee members have been a sounding board on issues that Dr Hutch has researched.
“This is an extraordinary photographic record of a way of life that is fast disappearing or has disappeared already.”
Hutchison, 65, has been preparing the album for republication, and noted the images complemented the monograph Reaction to Conquest, written by Prof Monica Wilson about Pondoland between 1931 and 1933.
“These 450 photos in the album of everyday life taken around about the same time as Reaction to Conquest are an important historical record, completely different to life today.
“The album has been in the family’s possession for many years.”
Hutchison spent two years researching his maternal grandmother while trying to locate original copies of the album.
“My grandmother died about 10 years before I was born.
“She wasn’t an academic anthropologist or historian.
“She was someone who was born and died in Pondoland and had grown up there and was deeply embedded and familiar with the Pondo culture, completely fluent in Xhosa from the age of three, she claimed.
“Her pictures are not styled or posed in any way. They are a wonderful capturing of the everyday.
“She learnt the art of developing all the photos herself.
“It’s incredible. A lot of the photographs wouldn’t pass professional muster today but they are of remarkable quality.
“The interesting find is while digitising and blowing them up, you see so many things in the background.”
Hutchison said Clarke’s photos were published in the Daily Dispatch during the 1930s and the original albums were still part of the British Royal Family archives.
“When the royal family visited SA in 1947, the white train took the family up to Mthatha and my grandmother presented a copy of the album to King George and Queen Elizabeth and another copy to Princess Elizabeth on the occasion of her engagement and marriage.
“We wondered what happened to them. I mentioned this to [retired Oxford University professor] William Beinart, who found them.
“There they were, in the royal collection in the Windsor Castle round tower.
“During the war years, she compiled a photograph collection by hand, annotated titles by hand and sold them in her tea room and curio shop outside Libode to tourists so it’s unknown how many she produced.
“I said there were one or two, but I’ve discovered around eight still in existence around the world.
“Professor Beinart was researching Mrs Clarke on his laptop when an advert popped up for Bonham’s Auctions in London, a manuscript sold for £6,375 (R148,234). He was amazed.”
Questions will be taken after the talk, after which tea and coffee will be served.
• Mrs Clarke of Pondoland — the photographer (b. 1890 — d. 1948) will be presented in the Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer Hall, East London Museum, on Saturday September 21 at 2.30pm.
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