Royal Commonwealth Society : Photographs of the West Indies

Various

Royal Commonwealth Society

<p style='text-align: justify;'>An album of predominantly commercial photographs of varying size. Each photograph is mounted on the album page with a short typescript caption beside it. These captions appear to have been added at a later date. A small number of the photographs are professional prints and have captions within them as well. The photographs are chiefly views of places in the West Indies, together with a few portraits. They mainly show Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Guyana but the album also includes images of Barbados, Dominica, Saint Vincent, Antigua, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Nevis, Saint Thomas and Martinique.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'> Only eight of the images have definite, identifiable photographers.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Y307A/1 is stamped 'Cooper and Company', presumably of Barbados for that is where the photograph was taken. No further information is available.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Y307A/71-73, 75, 80-82 are by Julio Augusto Siza, a commercial photographer active in British Guiana (now Guyana) during the 1880s and 1890s. He had a photographic studio, known as 'The Lusitana Photographic Gallery', in Water Street, Georgetown, from the mid-1880s to around 1896. Siza was awarded the Bronze Medal at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition, London 1886, two medals at the Chicago Exhibition circa 1896 and an Honourable Mention at the Berbice Exhibition.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'> The photographers of the remainder are unknown. No information is available concerning the identity of the compiler of the album or its provenance.</p>