Photographs by Gordon Guggisberg

In the beginning of this year while doing research on the history of the two Krobo states at the National Archives in Accra, I inquired whether there were any pictorial holdings. I was shown piles of early-20th-century slides and glass plate negatives, which were stored in the office of Director C. K. Gadzekpo. Disposing of some time, I ventured to have a closer look in order to know what this more than 2000-picture strong collection was all about. The result of this endeavor might be of interest to the readers of the GSC Newsletter.

The holding consists of two different collections. The first is a box with 71 slides measuring 82 X 82 mm, which stems from Governor Guggisberg and might have been a tool for presentations he gave on the colony and projects being carried on therein. Guggisberg numbered the plates in four different ways, and when establishing a hand list (which is enclosed at the end of this contribution) I endeavored to put the pictures in some order and facilitate their access. The second collection consists of slides and glass plate negatives taken by Sir E. A. Kitson who did a geological survey of the Gold Coast early in the century. This collection is immense and many of the cardboard boxes (each holding between ten and twenty pictures) are in bad condition. In total they contain 391 slides (83 x 83 mm) and roughly 1750 glass plate negatives in the following sizes: one-third of the pictures are of the sizes 120 x 163 mm and 100 x 125 mm, two-thirds are of the size 82 x 117 mm. The slides are reproductions of this stack of negatives. Few of the slides and of the smaller size negatives have got reference numbers and/or captions, which are written on the plates themselves and at times can hardly be read. There is some order given in that the glass plate negatives' boxes are numbered in pencil. In this order big size negatives are interspersed in the small size ones. But some of the boxes, especially the deteriorating ones, do not have numbers. Again I endeavored to reestablish this order, but due to the different sizes of the boxes and the collection not having a fixed storage place at the archives, this might not have been maintained.

Most of the pictures were taken from a geological and or geographical viewpoint during the many explorative tours, which Kitson undertook between 1916 and 1929. Thus, they show rivers, mountains, rocks and landscapes-in general, mining (both small and large scale), mining settlements and camp life during these journeys. Relatively few pictures depict the local population and village scenes, but all the same, such pictures exist. This makes the collection especially interesting for environmental studies or for a work on mining in Ghana.

Geographically, most of the pictures were taken in the North of modem Ghana and in the mining areas. There are also pictures taken in the Eastern Region, on the coast and in then Togoland. A clue for working with this collection, establishing an order and identifying places might be "The Diaries of A.E. Kitson (1913-1926)" which should be with the Ghana Department of Geological Survey (reference taken from Volta: Man's Greatest Lake by James Moxon, p.292).

This collection is of interest and should be made accessible in some form. The Director of Archives showed interest in it, but he also made clear that outside help and funding would be needed to make the collection useful to researchers. Shortly after my working with the collection, Mrs. Anja Scaforza of DANIDA (which has done a lot these last years in improving the National Archives of Ghana) also looked at the collection and began to evaluate whether something could be done in this direction.

One of the major problems associated with any initial work on the collection is sorting out of doubles and identifying "the original". This will be a painstaking work involving plenty of man-hours and requiring a lot of discipline. It would however be a mandatory step before starting any further work with the collection. Some help might be found in the slides Kitson made, as there might be no doubles amongst these and as they may represent (to him) the more important pictures. Judging from sketchy notes Kitson made on the boxes, however, it becomes clear that his enormous collection escaped his control. But, maybe, documentation of his slides or of the presentations he used them for will be found at some place.

Most of the pictures are in fairly good condition, few are broken, and some show fungus or other impacts. Most of the cardboard boxes in which the pictures are stored are in poor state. One therefore exercise care — the pictures should be cleaned with a brush, pure alcohol and soft tissue and then be stored in better containers. Three steps need to be taken: (1) creation of an inventory, (2) conservation and (3) making the pictures accessible. As most of the pictures are negatives, this would mean that even before they could be transferred onto a modem medium like CD-ROM, positives would have to be made so as to make the collection useful.

For the following hand list, the pictures were put in the order given by C, where available. The remaining pictures were assembled on the basis described in B.

FOR THE FULL LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS, CLICK HERE. (Note: the file is an Adobe Acrobat file--you must have Acrobat Reader software properly installed on your computer to read and print it.)

Photographs by Gordon Guggisberg and E.A. Kitson at the National Archives of Ghana, Accra

By Veit Arlt, Department of History

University of Basel, Switzerland