IDNO

P.56886.

Description

Formal portrait of Alese, the Chief of Ilese. Igeln Province, S.P. Nigeria.

Physical Condition: Gold toned silver-gelatin print from printing out paper.

Place

W Africa; Nigeria

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Alese, Chief of Ilese

Photographer

Olu Olusoga, M.

Collector / Expedition

Date

Collection Name

Source

Fegan, Ethel Sophia (Miss)

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.56880 to P.56886. were found inside the brown envelope C268/1/3/ which was inside the first drawer of the green cabinet, now numbered C268/1/.
C268/ is the new number given to the entire cabinet which was formerly numbered as batch 144.

CUMAA Exhibition: This print was displayed in Collected Sights in the section Visual Agency with the descriptive label:
“Studio portrait of Alese, a Nigerian chief. As artefacts of personal identity, such photographs were often given to visitors. This print was presented to the colonial officer E. Fegan when he visited Alese in his province in January 1929.” [Sudeshna Guha 26/11/09]

Biographical Information: Ethel Sophia Fegan (1908 - 1961) was born in Kent. Training firstly as a librarian, she worked as a “librarian of Girton College (1918-30), becoming an Honorary Fellow of the College in 1948. She also worked with Dr A C Haddon to build up the Haddon Library, and under his influence took the Cambridge Diploma in Anthropology (1929). After a sabbatical year in Nigeria (1928-29) she was appointed Lady Superintendent of Education for the Nigerian Government (1930-35) and in this role was a pioneer in the first official attempt to educate the women of that area.
She stayed in Nigeria, as a lay worker at Zaria Leper Colony (1938-39 and again 1945-46) for the British Empire Leprosy Relief Association, before resuming library work, investigating library conditions in British West Africa for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, working in various libraries in the UK and training Africans for library work at Achimota College on the Gold Coast, continuing to work well into her retirement. She was awarded the George V Jubilee Medal for her educational work in Africa.
On her return to Britain, Ethel Fegan worked as a volunteer in Cambridgeshire County Archives until she was over 90.” [Source: Janus, http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk, JD 2/7/2009]

Bibliographical Reference: ‘Some Notes on the Bachama Tribe, Adamawa Province, Northern Provinces, Nigeria. Part II’, by Ethel S. Fegan. In Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 29, No. 116 (Jul., 1930), pp. 376-400. Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal African Society [Source: Full text availalbe on JSTOR, JD 5/5/2010]

Exhibition: Digital reproduction of photograph exhibited in ‘Afrique, mille vies d’objects / Africa, a thousand lives of objects’ at Musée de Confluences, Lyon, France, from June 2023 – February 2024. See www.museedesconfluences.fr/en. [JD 25/01/2023]