NATIVE LIFE IN WESTERN PONDOLAND (Important photographic record)

Privately issued by the author, album of 66 pages (33 leaves on buff coloured card including an extra leaf, pages 21A and 21B on grey card titled 'After the Thunderstorm!') with  339 numbered photographs with corner mounts - between 4 and 9 per page  - all meticulously captioned by the author in ink. Tissue guards. With four pages of typescript attached to pages 3 and 52 with articles by Mrs Page - 'Superstition in West Pondoland' and 'War and Women'. Most of the photographs depict life and customs and are arranged under headings - 'Initiation into Womanhood', 'Wedding Reception', Bakweta or Circumcision Rites', 'Building a Home', 'Hut Thatching Series', The Growing Season', 'Harvest Time', 'Making Kaffir Beer', 'Herbalists of Pondoland', 'Pondo Youths Courtship', 'Their Love for Music,' and others. Bound oblong 4to (360 x 290 mm) in grey cloth with the title lettered in black on the upper cover.

Mrs. Fred Clarke (Ethel Eugene Clarke, 1890–1948), was born in the Transkei and lived at Insimbini, Umngazana, and Gosshill, where she photographed the Pondo people living in these areas from the mid-1920's onwards. She appears to have assembled this volume and the eight or nine other known copies by hand with some variations between the copies, in the late 1930's or early 1940's. The album is an important visual record of the Mpondo people. Clarke’s work is noted for its intimate and sympathetic quality, capturing the rhythm of daily life and sacred rituals. It documents a traditional society on the cusp of socio-economic change.

Ethel and her husband Fred were traders in Pondoland. Remarkably the photographs were taken with a simple 'box Brownie Camera'. She mastered the art of developing the films herself and the photographs show her considerable talent for composition. Copies of her album were presented to Queen Elizabeth and Princess Elizabeth when the royal family visited the Eastern Cape during the Royal Tour of 1947. These copies are now in the library at Windsor Castle.