The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960

July 1, 2009 1:55 PM

"This week -- for the first time ever -- a searchable collection of thousands of rare photographs chronicling Europe’s colonization of East Africa becomes available to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world, thanks to the efforts of staff at Northwestern University Library." (press release)
posted by gman (12 comments total)

The photos are all sorted in various ways on the left side of the site. I've been checking these out for hours (and not just because the site is damn slow).
posted by gman at 1:57 PM on July 1, 2009

The site is very slow on my already slow connection, but thanks for this. I love old photographs.
posted by Malice at 2:03 PM on July 1, 2009

Once a page of photos does (finally) load up, click on one you want to see, then once that loads, click on it again - it'll open in a new window and you can magnify it a fair bit.
posted by gman at 2:13 PM on July 1, 2009

Thanks for the tip. The zoom in feature is great.
posted by Malice at 2:24 PM on July 1, 2009

This is great. Love the zoom in. Thanks.
posted by Ohdemah at 2:43 PM on July 1, 2009

Freddie Mercury's birthplace is, I think, just left of centre in this shot.

Then again, I could be wrong. Stone Town is by far the most confusing medina I've ever visited...once got lost for an hour trying to take a shortcut on the five-minute walk back to the guesthouse...
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:02 PM on July 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

It's a shame you can't download the hi-res versions.
posted by vertigo25 at 6:14 PM on July 1, 2009

I did not find this interesting. Or, I should say, it might be interesting but it's too slow to find out. Perhaps others who have more patience than I do could post links to particular photos that they like.
posted by alms at 6:47 PM on July 1, 2009

Great site! Worth waiting for but it would be nice if the site owner fixed the slowness glitch. Love Capt. Speedy and the Little Prince.
posted by nickyskye at 9:19 PM on July 1, 2009 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting these. In the early 90s I was on an expedition to an area north of Dar Es Salam, Tanzania. Looking at some of the rural pictures from that area it is interesting to see how little has changed in the hundred years or so prior to that. Pith helmets have been replaced by t shirts but that is about it. This is the part of the world where the African Violet was discovered in the 19th century. It, of course, became wildly popular but, the original records exactly where the things lived in the wild were lost - so the sources have only recently been re-discovered in recent years.
posted by rongorongo at 3:43 AM on July 2, 2009

This is awesome.

Also, why the fuck doesn't North Western just upload these all to Flickr? Clearly they don't have the infrastructure to put them up on the web properly. And Flickr is all about puting old ass photos online for everyone to enjoy.
posted by chunking express at 6:28 AM on July 2, 2009

Northwestern Library kicks ass. I used to spend days just grazing in there. Seriously.
posted by fcummins at 7:40 AM on July 2, 2009