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Lot Essay
In the mid-19th century, Africans and representatives of other "primitive" cultures were shipped to Europe to be exhibited to the general public. They were also photographed and the prints sold. In summer of 1853, a group of Zulus, claimed by the English merchants who brought them as "the first Kafirs from the Zulu country [to be] exhibited in England" was on stage in London, along with the "Aztec Lilliputians" and the "Earthmen".1 That summer, Nicolaas Henneman photographed all three groups in his and Malone's London studio.
In First Photographs: People, Places & Phenomena as Captured for the First Time by the Camera, Gail Buckland included two of Henneman's 1853 photographs, one of a Zulu warrior taken on 14 June (offered in lot 22) and another of Earthmen children taken on 8 August. According to Buckland, both of these photographs were sent to Queen Victoria "who no doubt saw them as further proof of the humanitarian ideals in British colonialism."2
1 B. Lindfors (ed.), Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, Bloomington, Indiana, 1999, pp.62-64.
2 London, 1980, p.252.
In First Photographs: People, Places & Phenomena as Captured for the First Time by the Camera, Gail Buckland included two of Henneman's 1853 photographs, one of a Zulu warrior taken on 14 June (offered in lot 22) and another of Earthmen children taken on 8 August. According to Buckland, both of these photographs were sent to Queen Victoria "who no doubt saw them as further proof of the humanitarian ideals in British colonialism."