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Description
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The 'Images of Africans Collection' brings together photographs and visual materials drawn from a range of collections held at the Cory Library. These collections provide the foundation for researchers to investigate themes of cultural memory, identity and representation, as the images depict African people across different periods, places, and social contexts. Many of these images and materials were originally created within colonial or Western frameworks, and in some cases, the intent behind their production was shaped by ethnographic, administrative, or exhibitionary purposes that may carry negative or objectifying connotations.
This collection, as a project, is curated with reflection, inquiry, and critical engagement in mind, in its intention to redefine past constructions. The dynamic unobscuration of those past histories allows these images and materials to be recontextualised, acknowledging the circumstances of their creation while using them as sources through which African presence, lived experience, and historical reality can be more fully recognised. By bringing these materials together, the collection highlights Africans as individuals and communities situated within their own cultural, social, and historical contexts.
Through this reframing, the 'Images of Africans Collection' aims to foreground the dignity, resilience, and beauty of African people. It positions the images as part of broader processes of identity formation, heritage preservation, and collective memory, inviting critical engagement with the past while affirming African histories and experiences as central to the curative, preservative role of the Cory archive.
A councel of war 
A councel of war 
Chere Mpatsa Mokema, 1944 Glass negative : Head and shoulder portrait of a Basotho man, Chere Mpatsa Mokema, 1944. Original holding envelope marked 'Native in hat'.
Etaleneni Zulu woman Zululand March 1934 
Hundred weeks and hundred years 
Hundred Weeks and Hundred Years 
Hundred weeks and hundred years 
Langalibalele, Hlubi chief Head-and-shoulders portrait of Langalibalele, Hlubi chief. Langalibalele, commonly known as Langalibalele I, was also known as Dlomo II and later Mthethwa.
Lucas van der Westhuizen Photograph of Lucas van der Westhuizen.
Mail runner Mail runner at Etalaneni, carrying spear and letter bag, 1934.
Man smoking a pipe An old man smoking a pipe
Man wearing animal skins A man wearing a traditional dress consisting of animal skins and feathers
Mashona grain bins 
Mashona grain bins 
Mashona Kraal at Renton Gwelo 
Mashona Kraal at Renton Gwelo 
Mashona man and woman 
Mashona man and woman 
Mashona man, woman and child 
Mashona man, woman and child 
Mashona women and children 
Mashona women and children 
Mashonas standing outside the grain bins 
Mashonas standing outside the grain bins 
Men on road near KwaMagwaza Photo of two Zulu men on road near KwaMagwaza, 1934.