South African Souvenir, J.E. Middlebrook. Published by J.E. Middlebrook, The Premier Studio, 396 West Street, D’Urban, South Africa, 1899. Dated from introduction and gift inscription. Second Edition statement from Middlebrook’s introduction preceding photographs. Grained roan morocco padded leather covers, with gold-stamped title “South African Souvenir” on front cover; inner gilt dentelles; all edges gilt; marbled endpapers. Oblong 4to – over 9¾” – 12″ tall. Fifty-two platinotypes mounted on rectos and versos of leaves of stiff white card stock, printed caption below each photo. glassine tissue guards. Lovely gift inscription to pastedown bordered in used South African postage stamps; rear pastedown with additional used stamps. Contents in very good condition with some foxing to plates. Back strip is mostly missing from spine; loosened hinges. A rare surviving album with currently no copies found outside of institutional holdings.
The platinotypes prints were made from a photographic process using ferric oxalate in combination with platinum salts deposited directly on the paper. They are arranged by the photographer following the itinerary of a route from Capetown up the eastern coast of South Africa, through Port Elizabeth, Grahamstown, and East London, to Durban, and Pietermaritzburg, and provide views of the churches, parks, harbors, and main streets of these cities. Also included is a portrait of a Zulu boy, wearing animal horns on his head, with his rickshaw. Continuing up the coast into what is now Mozambique, Middlebrook photographs Delagoa Bay, and the towns of Inhambane, Beira, Chinde, at the mouth of the Zambezi River, and Quelimane. As he crosses west into the Matoppo Hills towards Bulawayo, he records “Mr. Rhodes’ Farm Buildings,” with a photo of “C.J.R.”–Cecil Rhodes–in the entrance of one of his conical “huts”. Shots of Kimberley include a bird’s eye view of the city from the De Beers Floors, and the Kimberley Sanitorium built by Rhodes. In Johannesburg, Middlebrook records a bird’s eye view of the city, the imposing new post office, Commissioner and Pritchard Streets, Joubert Park, the vast produce market, and processing buildings of the Randt Gold Mining Companies. There are also views of Pretoria–including a scene of “Naachtmaal,” when Boer farmers and families come to town for church services, and camp out in the town square–and the hills near Barberton, where Sheba G.M. Company mines quartz. Seven of the photographs portray native people, such as Chief Khama of the Batlapins, well-known for his friendship with Livingstone; Zulu men wearing head gear of rickshaw pullers in Durban; Zulu families in front of their homes in Natal, Zululand; an Amaxosa family in Cape Colony (Cape of Good Hope); a Matabele cane seller; a woman from Swaziland in native garb; and an east coast man, known as a Zanzibaree. The final two photographs are steamships: Union Steam Ship Company’s “Briton”; and Castle Mai Packets Company’s “Carisbrook Castle.”
J.E. Middlebrook was a late 19th-century South African photographer. The flourishing diamond mines in Kimberley brought hundreds of workers and photographers to the area beginning in 1867. J.E. Middlebrook followed soon thereafter in the early 1870s, and set up his photography studio, The Premier Studio, on West Street; he had a second studio in Durban, “Opposite the Club.” Middlebrook photographed the landscape, farms, cities, and people of South Africa.
