979 - Papua New Guinea - Album containing 103 mounted original photographs. Gelatin silver prints. Vintage prints. Circa 1897. Print sizes: 6.5 x 4.5 cm to 15 x 20 cm. Contemporary half-leather binding with title on the cover: 25 x 39 cm (scuffed, spine and headband with missing sections).

Papua New Guinea - Album containing 103 mounted original photographs. Gelatin silver prints. Vintage prints. Circa 1897. Print sizes: 6.5 x 4.5 cm to 15 x 20 cm. Contemporary half-leather binding with title on the cover: 25 x 39 cm (scuffed, spine and headband with missing sections). This album, likely compiled by an enthusiast of German New Guinea, documents various expeditions into the interior of Kaiser Wilhelm Land. The photographs—some of which are labeled on their backing cards—depict, among others, the zoologist, entomologist, and ornithologist Carl Wahnes (1833–1910), the ethnologist Ernst Wilhelm Müller (1925–2013), and the botanist Friedrich Markgraf (1897–1987). Next is a group photo featuring Karl Dammköhler (1856–1909), a gold prospector, explorer, and trader who, a few years later, would not survive an encounter with locals on the Watut River. Other photographs show Hans August Lorenz Klink, the North German colonial administrator, whose daughter Else—conceived with a local woman—would later become an icon of eurythmy. Photographs from what is believed to be the second Ramu Expedition in 1898 show the “stern-wheel steamer Herzogin Elisabeth,” a “mission school,” and a local “police unit.” Other achievements of the colonialists are depicted in the photos of the New Guinea Company freighter “Ysabel,” which is docked in the Oceanian port of “Friedrich Wilhelmshafen” (Madang), the clearing of land for the “construction of the cable car,” the “Hotel Deutscher Hof” in “Herbertshöhe” (Kopoko), and the “construction of a tobacco barn in Stephansort.” - Three photos bearing the blind stamp “N. Schmidt Charlottenburg 1897.” - Two photos with distinct, retouched layer damage; otherwise, some are slightly faded, others slightly rubbed or stained; the album pages have some water stains along the edges. #