This collection includes postcards from 45 African countries. Subjects include agriculture; animals; artists; body arts; cityscapes; cultural landscapes; dance; education; expeditions; flora; industry; leaders; marketplaces; medicine; military; missionaries; music; portraits; recreation; rites and ceremonies; and transportation, among many other topics.
Arrangement note:
Arranged by country and topic
Provenance:
NMAfA: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, 950 Independence Ave. S.W. 20560-0708;, Transfer;, 1985-ongoing;, 1985-0014
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Genre/Form:
Postcards
Citation:
African Postcard collection, EEPA 1985-014, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
This collection consists of two copies of the DVD "Arts of the Monsoon," (2016) one standard and one Blu-ray. Produced in 2016 by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the film portrays how the dhows, in sailing across the monsoon winds of he Indian Ocean between Oman and East Africa, brought cross-cultural influences along the coastal areas of Sur, Salalah, and Zanzibar.
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Verso labeled with former accession number format: A1995-38-52.
Original Version Note:
Recto image originates from Eliot Elisofon Field photographs collection, slide no. H 3 LLU 4.1 EE 70, accessioned as EEPA EECL 7340.
Copy and Version Identification Note:
Items EEPA CG-04-05 and CG-04-06 are duplicate postcards.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Collection Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Items EEPA ML-07-09 and EEPA ML-07-10 are duplicate postcards.
Local Numbers:
EEPA ML-07-09
General:
Title source: Postcard caption.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Collection Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Items EEPA ML-07-09 and EEPA ML-07-10 are duplicate postcards.
Local Numbers:
EEPA ML-07-10
General:
Title source: Postcard caption.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Collection Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Items EEPA NR-12-01 and EEPA NR-12-02 are duplicate postcards.
Local Numbers:
EEPA NR-12-01
General:
Title source: Postcard caption.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Collection Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Items EEPA NR-12-01 and EEPA NR-12-02 are duplicate postcards.
Local Numbers:
EEPA NR-12-02
General:
Title source: Postcard caption.
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Collection Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
This collection includes education, administrative and program documents collected and produced by the staff of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, in the conduct of museum business, 1974-2002.
Scope and Contents:
This collection includes education, administrative and program documents collected and produced by the staff of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, in the conduct of museum business, 1974-2002. There are slides and written materials related to a slide kit that the Education Department created for the program "The Creative Heritage of Africa". Administrative files include organizational and grant reports and documents about the development and implementation of the SIRIS (Smithsonian Institution Research Information System) database.
Arrangement note:
Arranged in two series by record type:
Series 1: Education Files, circa 1970s (25 folders)
Series 2: Administrative and Program Files, 1974-2002 (28 folders)
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Genre/Form:
Museum records
Citation:
National Museum of African Art Education, Administrative and Program Records, EEPA 1997-012, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Footage of unknown origin of Ikoma women, Tanganyika (Tanzania), dancing in an open area.
Please note that the contents of the collection and the language and terminology used reflect the context and culture of the time of its creation. As an historical document, its contents may be at odds with contemporary views and terminology and considered offensive today. The information within this collection does not reflect the views of the Smithsonian Institution or Anthropology Archives, but is available in its original form to facilitate research.
Local Numbers:
HSFA 1991.15.1
Provenance:
Received from the National Museum of African Art in 1991.
Restrictions:
The collection is open for research. Please contact the archives for information on availability of access copies of audiovisual recordings. Original audiovisual material in the Human Studies Film Archives may not be played.
The photographs document African businesses, cities, industry, landscapes, peoples and resources. The collection documents various locations within Kenya, Tanzania, Congo (Democratic Republic of), Zimbabwe, Uganda and South Africa. Peoples represented include Kikuyu, Maasai, Bangi, Chagga, Ndombe, Poto, Bangala, Zulu, and Kongo peoples. There are many images of agriculture, hunting, making pottery, mining diamonds and gold, church services at a Catholic mission, a gathering of chiefs at a court, a lion-killing ceremony, and war dances. Businesses and industries shown include coffee plantations; the DeBeers Diamond Mine; a diamond mine compound and crushing mill; fishing boats; a hemp plantation; ivory trade; a market; and the stock market.
Scope and Contents:
The photographs document African businesses, cities, industry, landscapes, peoples and resources. Place documented include Moshi Province, Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru, the Serengeti Plain (Kenya), and Zanzibar in German East Africa (now Tanzania); Victoria Falls and the Zambezi River in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe); Cape Town, Devil's Peak, Johannesburg, Kimberly, Natal Province, and Port Elizabeth in South Africa; the waterfront of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Soko, Boma, Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), and Stanley Falls (now Boyoma Falls). There are also photographs of the Nile during a flood.
People portrayed include a Kikuyu man paying brideprice for a wife; Kikuyu women carrying water vessels and planting beans; Maasai women building houses; Swahili people dancing; Swahili women using a power figure to ward off evil; and Zulu men training for war. Other peoples portrayed include Bangala, Bangi, Chagga, Kongo, Ndombe and Poto.
Activities documented include buying ivory, carrying rubber, clearing the ground for a coffee plantation, fishing, gambling, grinding corn, hunting zebra, making pottery, mining diamonds and gold, peeling bark for bark cloth, picking coffee, preparing food, smoking meat, threshing beans, and tying house poles. There are also images of church services at a Catholic mission, a gathering of chiefs at a court, a lion-killing ceremony, and war dances.
Businesses and industries shown include coffee plantations in Rhodesia; the DeBeers Diamond Mine in South Africa; a diamond mine compound and crushing mill; fishing boats off Cape Town; a hemp plantation in Uganda; ivory trade in Mombasa, Kenya; a market; and the stock market in Johannesburg.
Biographical / Historical:
In 1882 the Underwood and Underwood Company began operations in Kansas. Founded by brothers Bert Elias (1862-1943) and Elmer (1860-1947) Underwood, the company pioneered the technique of selling stereographs door-to-door. By 1884, Underwood and Underwood's operations had expanded to the West Coast, and the company soon opened offices throughout the world. In the 1890s, the firm began selling images to publications such as Illustrated London News and Harper's Weekly. At its peak in the early 19th century, the company produced 25,000 images per day.
In the late 1910s, Underwood and Underwood was purchased by a competing stereograph company, the Keystone View Company.
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
14 Photographic prints (Cartes-de-Vista (1 box), black & white)
46 Photographic prints (dupe prints, black & white, 8 x 10 in. or smaller )
8 Photographic prints ((1 box), black & white, 18.5 x 40 cm. or smaller )
32 Photographic prints (cabinet cards (1 box), black & white, 4 x 5.5 in. )
Container:
Volume 1
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographic prints
Cabinet photographs
Place:
Africa
Senegal
Date:
between 1880-1913
Summary:
Photographs and cabinet cards from Senegal collected by the staff of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, during the 1980s. Popular from the mid-1860s through the 1900s, cabinet cards were commercially produced 4" x 5 1/2" photoprints mounted on card stock measuring 4 1/4" x 6 1/2", often with an embossed studio name in the corner. Frequently sold as collectors' items, these cards often contained images of attractive women or royalty of various nationalities. Images include cabinet cards from the Bonnevide Photographic Studio and from J. Barbier.
Arrangement:
Images indexed by negative number.
Provenance:
NMAfA: National Museum of African Art,, Smithsonian Institution, Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, 950 Independence Ave, S.W. Washington, DC 20560-0708;, Transfer;, 1989;, 1989-0003
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Genre/Form:
Photographic prints
Cabinet photographs
Identifier:
EEPA.1989-003
Archival Repository:
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
Photographs taken by Marli Shamir in Mali, in 1971. The majority of the images show architecture in Djenne, Mali. Other images depict architecture of the Dogon in Timbuktu, Gao and San.
Photographs from this collection were featured by Labelle Prussin's thesis entitled, "The Architecture of Djenne; African Synthesis and Transformation," (Yale University, 1974) and in her book entitled, "Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa," (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). The images have also been displayed in an exhibition entitled, "Marli Shamir Photographs from the Sahel," held in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, in 1976.
Arrangement note:
Images indexed by negative number.
Biographical / Historical:
Marli Shamir (1919-2016) was an Israeli photographer known for her extensive work in Mali, the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso from 1966-1973. Born and raised in Berlin, Shamir started studying photography during her teenage years and took photography classes at the Contempora Lehrateliers für neue Werkkunst (1934-1937). In 1938, she was forced to immigrate to Israel where she initially lived in a kibbutz. From 1941-1943, she worked at the mineralogy department of the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, and then opened her own studio in Jerusalem in 1945. In 1953, she married Meir Shamir, a former Israeli Diplomat-Ambassador, and from 1966-1973 she lived successively in Mali, Gabon and Cote d'Ivoire. She held a particular fascination with architecture, monuments, mosques, arts and habitants. During her stay in Mali, she met Pascal James Imperato with whom she wrote the article Bokolanfini Mud Cloth of the Bamana of Mali, (African Arts, 1970). In 1976, she produced the exhibition Sahel at the Israeli museum in Jerusalem, which focused on the rural and urban architecture and people of the Sahel. The exhibition toured in Europe later that year. From 1977-1981, she lived in Strasbourg, where she focused on documenting the new style of architecture in Mali. Her work on this project is stored at the Center of Documentation in Strasbourg. In 2005, a book devoted to her photographs from Mali was published by the Grandvaux French Edition House. The National Poet of Mali, Albakaye Ousmane Kounta, collaborated with Shamir on the book of poetry Djenney-Ferey –La terre habitee (published by Grandaux, 2007), which is illustrated with Shamir's photographs. Shamir passed away in 2016 at the age of 93.
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Video of West African textile making produced by Caribiner, Inc. for the National Museum of African Art in 1987. Text accompanying videos for sale reads, "In many areas of West Africa, fabric is woven in long narrow strips. The strips are cut to length and then sewn together to make rectangular cloths with striking geometric. These beautiful cloths are worn as wrappers, shawls, and robes. Originally a slide prentation for an exhibition, the Art of West African Stip-Woven Cloth explores the creative activities of the various artisans involved in textile production: spinners, dyers, weavers, and sewers."
Collection Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Collection Rights:
Copyright held by the Smithsonian Institution. Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Photographs displayed in the exhibition entitled, "Regards croises," held at the National Museum of Mali in Bamako, Mali, from July 27 through August 26, 1990. The exhibit was a joint effort between the National Museum of Mali and The National Museum of African Art (U.S.), which included images from both museums. The prints are complementary copies from the National Museum of Mali. The National Museum of African Art provided images from the photographer, Eliot Elisofon.
Arrangement note:
Given the small size of the collection, the items are not arranged.
Restrictions:
Use of original records requires an appointment. Contact Archives staff for more details.
Rights:
For study purposes only. Permission to reproduce images from the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives must be obtained in advance. The collection is subject to all copyright laws.
Genre/Form:
Photographic prints
Photographs
Identifier:
EEPA.1995-015
Archival Repository:
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
African art studies : the state of the discipline : papers presented at a symposium organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, September 16, 1987
