IDNO

N.26788.WHI

Description

On Catalogue Card for duplicate image LS.26709.WHI: "N.W. Amazon. 175.14 - 16.
14. River view, with canoe.
15. Capt Whiffen in canoe, w. natives.
16. ? Capt. Whiffen's camp.
(3 slides)."

View of 'Robuchon’s party' on the bank of the Japura River. A man is sitting in a fully loaded canoe near the bank of the river. A small group of men, possibly South American Indians? and John Brown?, his Barbadian servant, standing on the bank, appear to be using ropes to pull the canoe towards the bank. A man is sitting on a rock in the foreground. The men are wearing European-style clothing.
The negative is a copy of a print pinned to a board. [TC 09/06/1999, updated JD 17/10/2019]

Place

S America; Colombia; North West Amazon; Japura River

Cultural Affliation

?Barbadian; ?South American Indian; ?European

Named Person

?John Brown

Photographer

?Whiffen, Thomas William; ?Robuchon, Eugenio

Collector / Expedition

Date

?1905 - 1909

Collection Name

Whiffen Collection

Source

Format

Glass Negative Halfplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

See also record for LS.26709.WHI for additional sources of information about this image.

See LS.26709.WHI record for notes about canoes.

Related Image: A duplicate print is at the RAI, reference 36138, and annotated by Whiffen in pencil on the reverse as “Robuchon’s party at the fatal rapids. Japura River.”
Photocopies of Whiffen prints at the RAI are in the UCMAA archive, reference W19/1/3. See Whiffen Collection record for further details on RAI collection. [TC 09/06/1999, updated JD 02/10/2019]

Some images in the Whiffen Colection were taken during Robuchon’s 1905-1906 expedition, and this is probably one of them. However, when Whiffen began his search for clues about Robuchon in 1908, he met some of the people who had accompanied Robuchon on his expedition. This image may have been taken at this point. It is possible that the man standing at the left is John Brown, Whiffen’s Barbadian servant, as described by Whiffen, T. W., 1915 (p. 3). Brown also accompanied Robuchon on his expedition.

The glass negatives in the Whiffen Collection were previously stored in two wooden trays numbered “Trays 105” on Shelf 3. Some of the glass negatives were found by the cataloguer in one of these trays, which was numbered C59/ by the cataloguer. The others were loose in piles on the shelf. An address label found in C59/ is addressed to a member of the Whiffen family and dated 1960. The label is now in the UCMAA archive, reference number W19/1/1. Each glass negative was stored, with duplicate glass negatives if any, in a museum archival bag. The bags containing images for which there is a corresponding mounted print in the Haddon Collection were marked with the original number of that print. A note by Gwil Owen which distinguished the printed and unprinted piles of glass negatives is now in the UCMAA archive, reference number W19/1/2. For full details see the Whiffen Collection record.