IDNO

N.51452.ACH2

Description

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.1069.ACH1: “Saibai church (exterior).”

View of the Saibai church constructed from corrugated iron with a small bell tower. A group of children are gathered around the base of a pile-house constructed from palm fronds to the left of the church. [JD 7/10/2008]

Place

Oceania Australasia; Australia; Torres Strait; Saibai

Cultural Affliation

Saibai Islander

Named Person

Photographer

?Haddon, Alfred Cort

Collector / Expedition

Haddon, Alfred Cort [Cambridge University Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, 1898 - 1899]

Date

23 October 1898

Collection Name

Unmounted Haddon Collection

Source

Haddon, Alfred Cort (Dr)

Format

Glass Negative Quarterplate

Primary Documentation

Other Information

N.51452.ACH2 was previously stored in an envelope now numbered C50/35/ which was in a wooden box now marked C50/. The envelope (C50/35/) is rehoused in Neg. Env. Box. 5 which is stored in Storage Box A in the Photo Archive room.

The box contains mostly negatives of objects in the UCMAA collection and a few from Saibai and Darnly Islands. All were taken in 1898. Some of the negatives have corresponding prints in the Mounted Haddon Collection (ACH1) [information from J.Philp 8/2/2000].

Bibliographical Reference: Haddon writes in his 1898 journal of his visit to Saibai, noting on pp. 250-251:
“Sunday Oct 23rd. We all left breakfast to attend the morning service which should have been at nine o’clock, but which postponed till our arrival. The church was opened about 2 years ago and is a very creditable edifice entirely built by the natives. Its walls and roof are of corrugated iron and the architecture is of the plainest, but the people and deservedly proud of their effort, which not only represent time, energy, and money spent by themselves, but it is the outward & visible sign to themselves of their civilisation. They feel it to be a bond of union between themselves and the white Christians. It is easy to sneer at its plainness – ugliness if you will of a tin tabernacle – but beneath an ugly casement there may lay enshrined an incipient lovely butterfly. The psyche of the savage or barbarian whether black or white may similarly merge from the ugliest and stuffiest of meeting houses.
It is often very pathetic to see the evident strivings of these people to be like the white man, to my mind they are too ready to castaway their past – for with the crudities and social unrest of savagery there are also flung aside may of the excellent moral codes and social safeguards of the old order of things. Much native wheat is torn up with the ?taros.
After the service I photographed the interior of the church and later I showed photographs, pictures, & sketches and we yarned on various topics – altogether we had a very profitable day.” [JD 10/10/2008]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Jocelyne Dudding 7/10/2008]