Unknown

Description

Black and white lantern slide showing a group in the Congolese village of Yoseki, in the northern half of the country. The group of men, women and children are smartly dressed: women wear dresses with headwraps, children wear wraps or smocks, and men wear shirts. An elderly man sits in the centre of the picture, with the arms of the woman immediately behing him on his shoulders. He wears a light safari suit and a wide-brimmed hat, indicating his status in the religious community. Palm trees and a thatched dwelling can be seen in the background of the picture. The slide is captioned, "Yoseki. Copy of Mr Kimbers." Yoseki was opened as a mission station of the Congo Balolo Mission in 1913. Sidney W Kimber, his wife and their two children worked as missionaries in the 1920s. Black and white lantern slides showing two Congo slave women. The women sit facing one another on a wooden bench in wrap dresses. One woman wears an ornament through her ear, whilst her companion wears a thin bracelet. Scarification marks can be seen on the arm of each woman. In the Congo, marking the body through scarring in patterns then controlling the healing process was an important cultural signifier, often carried out to indicate life stages or cultural belonging, with peoples of the Congo having some of the most complex designs in Africa. In women, scarification marks were added to intenisfy beauty, or to mark stages in life, such as childbirth - bearing...

Record Contributed By

University of Southern California Digital Library

Record Harvested From

California Digital Library