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Project Narrative - The pictorial collection in the Basel
Mission archive
This table gives a detailed overview of the different
parts of the collection. It also makes it clear which parts
of the collection were not included in the project which is
the subject of this report.
- The core of these holdings is the so-called "official
collection" of c. 15,000 selected photographic images, which
was started about 1900, but contains older series. This
collection was originally designed for publicity and information
purposes. It was no longer being systematically maintained
when the Second World War ended. 10,200 images of this
collection were included in the project. The images clearly
datable to the years after 1945 were ommitted - except in
the case of images from China, which for the sake of completeness
were included up to the expulsion of the missionaries in
1949-50.
- There is a collection of portraits of all male missionaries
taken as they left Basel to travel overseas for the first
time. This numbers 2,200 images, was begun in 1818, and
documents the changing techniques of portraiture in the
19th century, from hand-drawn pen-and-wash likenesses (230
items) through the early photographic techniques (Daguerreo-
and Ambrotypes, 84 and 49 items, respectively) to photographic
prints made from negatives. This part of the collection
has been included in the project in its entirety. As far
es we know the earliest photographs in the collection belong
to this series, portraits of the missionaries Dillmann,
Conrad and Süss taken, we assume, as they completed their
preparatory courses in 1850.
- The so-called "Remainder Category" contains all the photographic
prints which have entered the Archive from private hands
(donations, legacies) and all the photographic albums. Particularly
important are the ca. 100 albums which, taken together,
contain approximately 6,000 images, including most of the
very earliest images from overseas, However, for reasons
of quality and significance (collections of "snaps" from
the inter-war period!) only 9,800 of the ca.20,000 images
in the "Remainder Category" have been included in the project.
- Ca. 3,700 glass-plate negatives have survived from the
turn of the century, probably more by chance than design.
Ca. 2000 negatives from the African collection have
been included and appear in the imagebank as positives generated
during the process of rephotography. For all other negatives
references to the positive print were established.
- The "Sample Book" of wood engravings collected for use
in Basel Mission publications in the second half of the
nineteenth century contains 1,340 images. About one-third
are xylographs, i.e. wood engravings based on photographs.
The Sample Book has been included in the project in
its entirety.
- From ca 1890 - and perhaps even earlier - lantern-slide
series were created for use in the Mission’s publicity at
home. There are about 8,000 such slides in the collection.
Many slide-lectures can be reconstructed on the basis of
surviving copies of duplicated texts which were provided
as a spoken commentary to be read out as the slides were
being projected. The slides are mostly images derived
from prints in the "official collection" (para 1 above)
and can thus be regarded as duplicates. For this reason
only 760 slides have been included in the project, mainly
as examples of complete slide series.
- Ca. 2,100 images have been included as loans in the project
- photographs from the archival collection of the former
Basel Mission Trading Company, and the contents of a number
of albums still in family hands (including an album owned
originally by a maternal great-aunt of Hermann Hesse. One
of her brothers was a Basel missionary in South India in
the mid-19th century). These loans have been included
in the project to complement holdings in the Basel Mission
archive itself.
- A total of 28'400 images was included in the project on
which we report here. Their geographical distribution is
as follows:
| Cameroon |
6'100 |
Ghana
|
5'900 |
China, including Hong Kong
|
3'750 |
| India (including a small
collection of professionally- taken photographs and
postcards from Sri Lanka) |
5'900 |
| Kalimantan, Indonesia |
1'550 |
| Europe |
4'100 |
| Miscellaneous: America,
Japan, West Asia, Africa (other than Ghana & Cameroon)
|
1'100 |
About 50% of these images date back to before 1914.
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