Having looked, in recent weeks, at photography in Ethiopia in the nineteenth century, we turn now to the twentieth century. The Opening Years of the Twentieth Century The opening years of the Twentieth Century witnessed the advent of increasing numbers of photographer-travellers. Hugues Le Roux A Frenchman Hugues Le Roux, who made his way westwards to Wallaga in 1900-1, took pictures showing architectural developments in the principal towns, besides informative pictures of the everyday life of the people, and published…

We saw last week that some of the earliest photographs to be taken in Ethiopia were those of the British expedition to Maqdala in 1867-8. Now read on:. In the late 1870s King Menilek of Shawa arranged to employ three Swiss craftsmen to help him in the modernisation of his country. Alfred Ilg The most notable of them, Alfred Ilg, a graduate of the Zurich polytechnic, arrived in 1879, and served for many years as both technician and diplomatic advisor….

We saw last week that the first photographs to be shot in Ethiopia were apparently shot by the Protestant missionary Henry Aaron Stern. These, as we shall now see, were followed by others, taken by the Napier Expedition of 1867-8, Now read on. The British campaign of 1867-8 was the first to take advantage of the tremendous technological strides that had occurred in Europe since the Crimean War a decade or so earlier. Among various new inventions, including breech loading…

Optical science made its earliest impact on the recording of Ethiopian images in the late eighteenth century. The first to make use of it was the Scottish traveller James Bruce, who obtained a camera obscura to assist him in sketching the country. The apparatus, a cumbersome affair, was constructed according to his own specifications by the London firm of Nairne and Blunt, and was modified several times before he was satisfied. When eventually accepted the instrument, as Bruce notes in…