Wednesday, October 3, 2018 / Labels: history of photography, Thomas Easterly
In Photos: Remembering 19th-Century Daguerreotypist Thomas Easterly
October 3, 2018 /Photography News/ Born 209 years ago today, on October 3, 1809, Thomas Martin Easterly was one of the most prominent and well-known daguerreotypists in the Midwest United States during the 1850s, with his studio becoming one of the first permanent art galleries in Missouri.
By 1844, Easterly had begun practicing photography taking outdoor photographs
of architectural landmarks and scenic sites in Vermont. Among his
earliest daguerreotypes, made a decade before outdoor photography was
popular or profitable, those of the Winooski and Connecticut rivers are the only known examples to be self-consciously influenced by the romantic landscape paintings of the Hudson River School
artists. He was also the first and only daguerreotypist to identify his
work using engraved signatures and descriptive captions.
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Ruins of the Great St. Louis Fire, 17-18 May 1849. Daguerreotype by Thomas M. Easterly, 1849. Source: Missouri History Museum Photographs and Prints Collections |
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No-Che-Ninga-An, Chief of the Iowas, 1845 |
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Lynch's Slave Market, 104 Locust Street, 1852, by Thomas Martin Easterly. According to the National Parks Service, "there were constant reminders of the horrors of slavery in antebellum St. Louis. One of the worst involved the open sales of slaves at various places along the city’s busiest streets, which was an accepted community practice. Regular slave auctions and sales were held in several places, most notably at the slave market run by Bernard M. Lynch on Locust Street between Fourth and Fifth. This market was moved in 1859 to Broadway and Clark Streets. Lynch’s “slave pens” were former private residences with bars placed on all the windows to secure them like prisons. Slaves were herded off steamboats and up the street to the slave houses, then sold to persons, especially after 1840, from outside St. Louis, mostly from the western counties in Missouri or further down the river. Families were broken up, with children taken from mothers, fathers sold down the river, husbands and wives separated. And all of this was done in full view of crowds wishing to buy and passersby going about their daily business." Source: Missouri History Museum. |
In the fall of 1845, Easterly traveled to the Midwest United States and toured the Mississippi River
with Frederick F. Webb as representatives of the Daguerreotype Art
Union. The two gained some notoriety from their photography of the
criminals convicted of the murder of George Davenport
in October of that year. Iowa newspapers reported that Easterly and
Webb had achieved a "splendid likeness" of the men shortly before their
execution.
Easterly soon became popular for his portraits of prominent residents of St. Louis and visiting
celebrities which were displayed in a temporary gallery on Glasgow Row. One of these portraits was that of Chief Keokuk taken March 1847. He also took a daguerreotype of a lightning bolt, one of the first recorded "instantaneous" photographic images, while in St. Louis. This was later recorded in the Iowa Sentinel as an "Astonishing Achievement in Art". Before returning to Vermont in August 1847, the St. Louis Reveille described his as an "unrivaled daguerreotypist".
Easterly was brought back to Missouri by John Ostrander,
founder of the first daguerreotype gallery in St. Louis, in early 1848.
Preparing for an extended "tour of the south", Ostringer asked Easterly
to manage his portrait gallery. Esterly would continue running the
gallery when Ostringer died a short time later. Many of his unique streetscapes
depicting mid-19th-century urban life were taken from the window's of
Ostringer's gallery. In June 1850, he married schoolteacher Anna Miriam
Bailey and settled in St. Louis permanently.
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Daguerreotype portrait of Enoch Long, circa 1855, Thomas Easterly. Source: Missouri Historical Society |
By the
1860s most photographers had abandoned
the daguerreotype process for the
albumen and collodion processes.
Easterly felt that the daguerreotype was
an art form and refused to adopt new
techniques, urging the public to "save your old daguerreotypes for you will never see their like again". His studio
suffered from declining patronage, and
he himself developed poor health,
probably due to the mercury poisoning
often associated with the daguerreotype
process.
Despite the declining interest for pictures on silver, he was
able to maintain his gallery until it burned in a fire in 1865. He was
forced to move to a smaller location and continued working in near
obscurity until his death in St. Louis on March 12, 1882.
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Daguerreotype Gallery of Thomas Martin Easterly, St. Louis, Missouri, 1851. Author: unattributed. Source: Missouri History Museum |
After his death, his wife sold most of his personal collection to John Scholton, another noted St. Louis photographer. The Scholton family eventually donated the plates to the Missouri Historical Society
where they remained for nearly a century before being rediscovered
during the 1980s by art scholars studying pre-American Civil War
photography.
Although his reputation was limited to the Midwest during his lifetime, Easterly is considered to have been one of the foremost experts in the field
of daguerreotype photography in the United States during the mid-to-late 19th century.
The most complete appreciation of
Easterly's life and work, with 233
illustrations is Dolores Kilgo's book
“Likeness and Landscape: Thomas M.
Easterly and the Art of the
Daguerreotype” published by the Missouri
Historical Society Press in 1994. An
exhibit of the same name accompanied the
book.
Monday, September 24, 2018 / Labels: early cinema, Vim Comedy Company, vintage photos
Early 20th century movie stills: Vim Comedy Company
September 24, 2018 /Photography News/ In early years of American movies, Jacksonville, Florida, experienced a brief turn in the spotlight as one of the hubs for filmmaking on the east coast.
The Vim Comedy Company, based in Jacksonville and New York, was one of several film studios operating in the Jacksonville area in the first three decades of the 20th century.
Most of the images presented here were collected by one of the Vim actors, William "Billy" Bletcher (September 24, 1894 – January 5, 1979), while working at the studio between 1915 and 1917.
Before going out of business in 1917, it employed such stars as Oliver “Babe” Hardy, Ethel Burton, Walter Stull, and Kate Price, as well as Swedish-born director Arvid Gillstrom.
The Florida Photographic Collection contains more than 158,000 images, representing the most complete portrait of Florida available.
Courtesy of the Florida Memory / State Library & Archives of Florida
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Motion picture scene, 1916. This image was collected by filmmaker William "Billy" Bletcher (1894-1979) while working for the Vim Comedy Company between 1915 and 1917. The small film studio was based in Jacksonville and New York. The company produced hundreds of two-reel comedies (over 156 comedies in 1916 alone). Before going out of business in 1917, it employed such stars as Oliver Hardy, Ethel Burton, Walter Stull, Arvid Gillstrom, and Kate Price. Ethel Burton (Palmer) was a popular comedic actress who made her debut with Vitagraph Pictures in 1915. She co-starred in several Billy West comedies (a popular Charlie Chaplin imitator), and was married to director Arvid Gillstrom, a Swedish-born filmmaker who directed many of the West comedies. Burton did little acting after the 1910s. Most of the films she made in Florida were with the Vim Comedy Company. Tallahassee pennant in the background. L-R: Ethel Burton Palmer, Bobby Burns, and Walter Stull. |
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Motion picture scene, 1916. Harry Naughton, Ethel Burton, and unidentified actors. Unable to tell which individual is which. |
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Motion picture scene, 1916. L-R: Bobbie Burns, Ethel Burton, (?), and Walter Stull. |
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Motion picture scene, 1916. L-R: Rosemary Thebe and Harry Myers. |
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Motion picture scene, 1916. Ethel Burton Palmer is to the left and an unknown actor to the right. Ethel Burton (Palmer) was a popular comedic actress who made her debut with Vitagraph Pictures in 1915. She co-starred in several Billy West comedies (a popular Charlie Chaplin imitator), and was married to director Arvid Gillstrom, a Swedish-born filmmaker who directed many of the West comedies. Burton did little acting after the 1910s. Most of the films she made in Florida were with the Vim Comedy Company. |
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Motion picture scene, 1916. L-R: Walter Stull(?), Harry Meyers, and Rosemary Thebe. |
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Motion picture scene from Strangled Harmony, 1916. L-R: Bobby Burns, (?), Ethel Burton Palmer, (?), Walter Stull. |
Sunday, September 16, 2018 / Labels: General Motors, Oldsmobile photos
In photos: Four decades of Oldsmobiles (1897 -1938)
September 16, 2018 /Photography News/
General Motors, also known as GM, was founded on 16 September 1908, in Flint, Michigan, as a holding company for Buick, then controlled by William C. Durant. At the turn of the 20th century there were fewer than 8,000 automobiles
in America and Durant had become a leading manufacturer of horse-drawn
vehicles in Flint, MI, before making his foray into the automotive
industry. Today GM employs more than 200,000 people around the world.
General Motors Company. Oldsmobiles 1897
- 1938. Photographs courtesy of the New York Public Library.
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Our First Oldsmobile - 1897 |
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1900 - Oldsmobile, curved dashed ru[n]about, 1 cylinder |
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1901 - Oldsmobile, curved dashed runabout, 1 cylinder |
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1903 - Oldsmobile PIRATE special 1 cylinder racer, holder of 1 mile straight record.. 1903 |
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1904 - Oldsmobile , curved dashed runabout model 6, 1 cylinder.. 1904 |
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1909 . Oldsmobile Model D, 4 cylinders |
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1910 - Oldsmobile Model 23-24, limited, 6 cylinders |
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1913 - Oldsmobile Model 40, 4 cylinders |
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1915 - Oldsmobile Model 43, 4 cylinders |
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1926 - Oldsmobile Model 30-D, 6 cylinder, Landau Sedan |
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1935 - Oldsmobile Model F-35, 6 cylinder |
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1936 - Oldsmobile Model F-36, Touring Sedan, 6 cylinder |
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1937 - Oldsmobile Six Convertible Coupe - Family outing |
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1937 - Santa Claus writes O.K. on a new Oldsmobile Six |
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1938 - Lady with the fox terrier trying to shift gears in a new Oldsmobile eight cylinder convertible coupe |
Thursday, September 13, 2018 / Labels: Kevin Carter, photojournalism ethics, Pulitzer
Remembering Kevin Carter and the photo that made the world weep
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Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph |
September 13, 2018 /Photography News/ Born 58 years ago, on 13 September 1960 (d. 27 July 1994), Kevin Carter was an award-winning South African photojournalist and member of the Bang-Bang Club. He was the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph depicting the 1993 famine in Sudan. Following the winning of the Pulitzer Prize he committed suicide at the age of 33.
In March 1993, while on a trip to Sudan, Carter was preparing to photograph a starving toddler trying to reach a feeding center when a hooded vulture landed nearby. Carter reported taking the picture, because it was his "job title", and leaving.
Sold to the New York Times, the photograph first appeared on 26 March 1993 and was carried in many other newspapers around the world. Hundreds of people contacted the Times to ask the fate of the girl. The paper reported that it was unknown whether she had managed to reach the feeding center. On May 23, 14 months after capturing that memorable scene, Carter walked up to the platform in the classical rotunda of Columbia University's Low Memorial Library and received the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography.
With the success of the image came a lot of controversy, and questions were raised about the ethics of taking such a photograph. An article printed in 1994 in the St Petersberg Times commented on the morality of Carters actions, ‘the man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene,’ (Stamets cited in Ricchiardi, 1999).
The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) have a ‘Code of Ethics’ which sets out certain ethical responsibilities when carrying out journalistic work, one reads as thus, ‘while photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events’ (NPPA, 2010). Considering this, one can say Carter was objective and documented what he saw, capturing the severity of the situation in Sudan. But does this alleviate him from the responsibilities of being a good human being?
On 27 July 1994 Carter drove his way to the Braamfonte near the Field and Study Centre, an area where he used to play as a child, and took his own life by taping one end of a hose to his pickup truck’s exhaust pipe and running the other end to the driver's side window. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning, aged 33. Portions of Carter's suicide note read:
"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners ... I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."
Carter's story is depicted in the 2010 feature film, The Bang-Bang-Club in which he was played by Taylor Kitsch.
Related: New York Post Runs Pic of Man About to be Hit by Subway Train, Sparks Photojournalism Ethics Debate
Related: 50+ Photography Related Movies
Related: 50+ Photography Related Movies
Friday, September 7, 2018 / Labels: DIY, paper camera, paper crafts, paper lens
DIY: 3 photography related paper crafts anyone can make

September 7, 2018 /Photography News/ Weather they are cut, pasted, folded, or printed, photography paper crafts are always fun to make. Here are three easy ideas for your inspiration, so put away your real camera and try them out.

Box: Camera Type EOS650
Artist:ERI KAMEI
Download and instructions: http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/CNT-0020915/index.html

Box: Lens Type EF200-400mm F4 L IS USM EXTENDER 1.4x
Artist:ERI KAMEI
Download and instructions: http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/CNT-0020913/index.html

Tray: Lens Type EF11-24mm F4L USM
Artist:ERI KAMEI
Download and instructions: http://cp.c-ij.com/en/contents/CNT-0020917/index.html
See also:
Saturday, September 1, 2018 / Labels: history in photos, Photography News, WWII photos
In photos: Life during World War II
Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow,
We Gave Our Today.
The Second World War (1939-1945) is generally accepted to have begun 79 years ago today, on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany, and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France, Britain and most of the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth.
These photographs show the men and women who served in World War II, 1939-1945. They are from the collections of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, and the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands.
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Farewell, n.d., between 1940-1945, by Sam Hood. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales |
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6th Division arrives at the wharves, 9-10 January 1940, by Sam Hood. Note: Sydney - Berlin was the aim, but High Command had other ideas. The 6th Division was largely responsible for the defeat of Italy in the Middle East, then moved on to Greece and New Guinea. This photo is from a collection depicting the wartime departure of the 6th Division for the Middle East, 9-10 January 1940. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales. |
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Second World War. German soldier in a tank. [possibly a Renault UE, a French made "Armored Tractor" or "Infantry Supply Vehicle"; designed for utility work, used and modified by the Germans]. German soldiers are helping the French farmers plough their fields. France, 1941. From the collection of the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands. |
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This photo is from a collection depicting the wartime departure of the 6th Division for the Middle East, from Sidney, 9-10 January 1940. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales. |
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Soldier's goodbye and Bobbie the cat, between 1939-1945, by Sam Hood. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales. |
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Wounded and invalids. German wounded return their empty coffee cups to Red Cross nurses just prior to departure. Location unknown. 1941. From the collection of the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands. |
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War loans displays, State Theatre, Sidney, October 20, 1943, by Sam Hood. From the collection of the State Library of New South Wales. |
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April 11, 1945, Deventer, the Netherlands. From the collection of the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands. |
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Liberation of the concentration camp Amersfoort. Three Dutch army officers behind barbed wire. From the collection of the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands. |
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Starved prisoners, nearly dead from hunger, pose in concentration camp in Ebensee, Austria. The camp was reputedly used for "scientific" experiments. It was liberated by the 80th Division. 7 May 1945. Author: Samuelson, Lt. A. E. |
Thursday, August 30, 2018 / Labels: Gustave Le Gray, history of photography, inovation
In photos: Remembering Gustave Le Gray, one of the most important French photographers of the 19th century
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The Beech Tree, by Gustave Le Gray (circa 1856). In October 1999, Sotheby's sold a Le Gray albumen print "Beech Tree, Fontainebleau" for £419,500, which -at that time- was a world record for the most expensive single photograph ever sold at auction to an anonymous buyer. Later that day -at the same auction- an albumen print of "Grande Vague, Sète" ("The Big Wave at Sète," "The Great Wave, Sète") also by Le Gray was sold for a new world record price of £507,500 or $840,370 to the same anonymous buyer who was later revealed to be Sheik Saud Al-Thani of Qatar. The record stood until May 2003 when Al-Thani purchased a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey for £565,250 or $922,488. August 30, 2018 /Photography News/ Born 198 years ago today, on 30 August 1820, in Villiers-le-Bel, Val-d'Oise, Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray has been called by the J. Paul Getty Museum "the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century" because of his technical innovations in the still new medium of photography, his role as the teacher of other noted photographers, and "the extraordinary imagination he brought to picture making". |
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Gustave Le Gray, Self-portrait (late 1850s) |
Le Gray was originally trained as a painter, studying under François-Édouard Picot and Paul Delaroche. Later, he crossed over to photography in the early years of its development.
He made his first daguerreotypes by 1847.
He taught photography to students such as Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, Olympe Aguado, and Maxime Du Camp.
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Photographic portrait of Louis-Napoléon / Napoleon III (1852) by Gustave Le Gray |
Despite being a successful portraitist (Napoleon III being one of his clients), the studio Le Gray opened in 1855 was poorly managed and he ran into debts. As a consequence, he closed the studio, abandoned his wife and children, and fled the country to escape his creditors.
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Alexandre Dumas (father), 1860, by Gustave Le Gray |
He began touring the Mediterranean in 1860 with Alexandre Dumas, crossing paths with Giuseppe Garibaldi. Later, Le Gray went to Lebanon, then Syria, settling finally in Egypt in 1864, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
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Camel transporting artillery, Egypt (1866), by Gustave Le Gray |
Gustave Le Gray's technical innovations include:
- Improvements on paper negatives, specifically waxing them before exposure making the paper more receptive to fine detail.
- A collodion process published in 1850 but which was theoretical at best. The invention of the wet collodion method to produce a negative on a glass plate is now credited to Frederick Scott Archer who published his process in 1851.
- Combination printing, creating seascapes by using one negative for the water and one negative for the sky at a time where it was impossible to have at the same time the sky and the sea on a picture due to the too extreme luminosity range.
Sunday, August 26, 2018 / Labels: history of photography, Kristen Feilberg, Penang
In photos: Remembering Danish photographer Kristen Feilberg
August 26, 2018 /Photography News/ Born 179 years ago in Denmark, on 26 August 1839, Kristen Feilberg (Christen Schjellerup Feilberg) is best known for his images captured in Sumatra, Singapore, and Penang.
After giving up his dream of becoming a painter, Feilberg followed his sister
to Singapore in 1862 where he worked partly as a tobacco agent and
partly as a photographer. In 1867, he set up his own studio in Penang and, the same year, exhibited 15 views of Penang and Ceylon at the Paris World Exposition.
The earliest photographs of eastern Sumatra were taken by Feilberg in
1869. Considered to be of excellent quality, they include integrated
group portraits of workers on tobacco plantations. They are presented in three albums entitled "Views" at the Royal Tropical Institute.
Feilberg died in Singapore in 1919.
Scores of Feilberg's photographs from the collection at the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam can be accessed on Wikimedia Commons as well as at the Tropenmuseum itself.
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Three Batak warriors with spears and swords in front of a wooden construction. A dog lies between the two girders at the left. Circa 1870 |
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Batak war canoe near Lake Toba, Sumatra, 1870 |
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Deli river, circa 1870 |
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Batak family, circa 1870 |
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Portrait of a Batak woman, circa 1870 |
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Batak village, circa 1870 |
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Portrait of workers, Deli, circa 1870 |
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Batak, circa 1870 |
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Dyak women, Borneo, 1860s |
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Rev. Habb preaching to the Klings (South Indians) in Penang, 1867 |
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