#PF67
Ca. 1920s-1930
Two Oblong Folio albums ca. 23x32,5 (9 x 12 ¾ in) and ca. 22x30,5 cm (8 ¾ x 12 in). Album 1: 22 card stock leaves with tissue guards. With 22 mounted gelatin silver photos, all ca. 12x17 cm (4 ½ x 6 ½ in); all images with typewritten captions in French mounted underneath. Period brown full cloth album fastened with a string. Several photos detached from the mounts; most leaves detached from the stub and loosely inserted, a few photos mildly faded, but overall a very good album. Album 2: 27 card stock leaves. With 27 mounted gelatin silver photos (including a dozen duplicates of the images in album 1; ten images are in two copies), all ca. 16,5x22 cm (6 ½ x 8 ½ in). No captions. Period brown full cloth binding, rubbed on the extremities and slightly loosened on the hinges. Two images with minor scratches on the surface, but overall a very good album of interesting photos.
An interesting collection of early original gelatin silver photos, documenting organized beach sands mining operations in French West Africa in the 1930s – possibly, for gold or heavy minerals. The first album opens with a scene on a “prayer field,” taken during the first day of “Tabaski” (a West African name of Eid al-Adha, one of two main festivals in Islam). Two photos were taken during “prospecting” and show an automobile trying to move through an overgrown area and a “tornade pendant une prospection.” Other photos document the mining operations and show African workers digging the “minerai” (ore) sand, loading it into buckets and then onto mine carts, pushing the carts along a narrow-gauge rail line to the ore-drying and processing plant, and emptying the sand into trommel devices. There are also views of the loading area, workers filling sacks and putting them into rail carts, pushing them to the sea shore, loading the sacks into native pirogues, which in turn bring the cargo to “chalands” (barges), with the transportation steamer waiting at sea (visible in the background). The second album contains additional photos of an industrial building under construction, piles of ore and filled bags at the loading area, workers loading the pirogues, cleaning a transportation cart in the sea, &c. Overall an interesting collection of original photos documenting early beach sand mining operations in West Africa.
