IDNO

N.13236.GIJ

Description

View of a Ngwomo ‘ghost house’, and a “modern monument”. The ‘ghost house’ has a raffia mat roof on a three-sided wall in a u-shape which is painted with frescos. The “modern monument” or grave is made of cement a has text painted on it which includes the date: 5.3.1932.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria; South Eastern Nigeria

Cultural Affliation

Ibibio [historically Anang]

Named Person

Photographer

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

Collector / Expedition

Date

1932 - 1938

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 “IBIBIO & OKWU WALL” by G. I. Jones, and numbered “C12/” by the cataloguer.

Publication: Same image in Jones, 1984, p. 105, Plate 30 with the caption, Modern monument and Ngwomo.

Context: Jones writes about the Ngwomo ghost houses. “Many of the Anang (Western Ibibio) tribes used to erect monuments for their more important dead in the form of conventionalised houses. The architecture was of little significance as the building was reduced to a single wall surmounted by a raffia matt roof. If the deceased was a man the buidling was tall and narraow and the wall was a length of imported cotton lcoth stretched across...This house was erected for an important female who had died.
Anang Ngwomo ghost houses for females were painted with figures of men, women, animals and objects from everyday life mainly depicted in profile against a white background. See Jones.G.I. 1984: 105- 106.

Jones, 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 25/3/2008]