Inuit interest, 66 magic lantern slides, early 20th century,...

Hammer

£3,500

Inuit interest, 66 magic lantern slides, early 20th century, within original wooden box. A fascinating and culturally important archive of Moravian missionary photographic images of the Inuit. Specifically early images the indigenous peoples of the Labrador region of Canada. Including images relating to Nain, Okak, Killinek, the Hebron Mission and its missionaries and also pictures of the SS Harmony, the Moravian Mission Ship, which was responsible for the devastating influenza epidemic that almost wiped out the region’s entire Inuit population in 1919. These beautiful and quite remarkable images show aspects of Inuit life; women and children in traditional seal skin clothing, dogs and sleds, men hunting, fishing and the natural environment. Some slides are annotated but few are dated, one is dated 1909, two are dated 1912 and another 1913, but all are likely to date from around this time period or earlier. Many are posed but taken outdoors. A small number show Europeans and probably relate to the missionaries and their families. One of the notable missionaries is Brother Walter Perrett of Labrador. The SS Harmony is shown, also its crew and photos of the ship in dry dock, undergoing repairs. In the summer of 1919, SS Harmony carried Spanish flu from St John's to Hebron and Okak. The resulting deaths cut the population of Hebron and the surrounding area from 220 to 7. In Okak 204 of the 263 residents died, including every adult male Inuit; the survivors dismantled the community entirely, burning all houses and furniture before moving to Nain, Hopedale or Hebron. There was a strong culture of photography among the Moravian missionaries and these startlingly beautiful images would have been presented during public talks to European home congregations. The missionary Brother Perrett was a photographer but a likely creator of these images was Paul Hettasch, who was a very prolific German missionary photographer who served in Labrador for nearly half a century (1898 to 1947). He received three years of training at Niesky, the Missionsschule in Saxony and was married to Ellen Marie Koch, the daughter of Herman Koch, an award-winning professional photographer of international repute.