IDNO

N.13059.GIJ

Description

View into a building containing a painted wooden model of a train, photographed from the entrance of the building. Electricity pylons run parallel with the track, and a man figure wearing a helmet smoking a pipe is sitting on a chair at a table with two wine bottles on it in front of the train. The interior walls are painted with ?multi-coloured patterns. The building has a corrugated iron roof. A wooden gate to the building is propped open in the foreground, one side of which is attached to a pillar or a chimney?.
In the centre foreground of the image it the photographer’s shadow.

Physical Condition: Brittle, yellowing negative.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; Eastern Nigeria; Nike

Cultural Affliation

Igbo [historically Ibo]

Named Person

Photographer

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1939

Collection Name

Jones Collection

Source

Jones, Gwilliam Iwan (known as G.I.)

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in a film storage album labelled “Misc” by G. I. Jones, and numbered “C10/” by the cataloguer.

Context: This image is one of a series of images of the “train juju” at Nike town. The “idea of building houses decorated with carvings ostensibly for the honour of the village or town deity, but primarily for the prestige of the place, occurred sporadically during the 1930s in a number of ... Ibo communities. For example, the people Nike (Northern Ibo) whose land was traversed by the Nigerian Eastern railway, made a house with a wooden model of a railway train complete with passengers and other accessories for the honour of their tutelary deity.” (Jones, 1984,110)

Bibliographical Reference: ones, G.I., 1984. The Art of Eastern Nigeria (Cambridge University Press)

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Alicia Fentiman 27/11/2007]