1789.a.13, 1

Imprint: Berlin 1881. Verlag von J. F. Stiehm. Schönhauser Allée 169.

Quarter leather and red buckram volume measuring 248 x 342 mm, containing 78 albumen prints (numbered 1-50), mounted within ruled borders one or two to a page (recto only), on olive tinted card leaves, with letterpress captions in German printed on the mount beneath each image. The 5 pp. introductory text is by Robert Hartmann. The smaller size images (mainly portraits of tribal types in ethnographical style) are mounted two to a page; the larger format prints (groups and topographical views) are mounted singly on the page and are generally also titled (in French) and signed in the negative. This first volume has a printed titlepage and a 5 pp. introduction by Dr. Robert Hartmann pasted down onto blank leaves at the front. The remaining 82 prints are contained in the second volume. The Austrian photographer Richard Buchta (born Poland 1845; died Vienna 1894), apparently came to Egypt as a professional photographer in around 1870. In 1877 he was engaged as photographer with Romolo Gessi's Italian exploring expedition to the Sudan, but the expedition's baggage was destroyed in a fire and Buchta did not form part of the reconsituted expedition later in the same year. By 1878, however, Buchta has relocated to Khartoum and on 8 August set out from there to Lado with members of the Church Missionary Society on board the S.S. 'Safia.' After being held in the Sudd for nearly two months, they were released by Emin Pasha in early October. From here Buchta moved to Rejaf and the missionary G. Litchfield records that on 11 November 'Felkin [another member of the C.M.S. party] went to look at Mount Rejaf with Buchta.' Buchta appears to have travelled with Emin Pasha from Rejaf to Dufile in December. Emin records that on 7 January 1879 he again encountered Buchta, who was travelling to Fatiko. By February he was at Foweira, and on 18 March he arrived back at Lado from Magungo. The period from the end of January to early March 1879, therefore, encompasses the time in which Buchta's Bunyoro (Northern Uganda) photographs could have been taken. He appears to have stayed at Lado until 7 July, when he set off for Makaraka, returning in late August. Several photographs from this trip also appear in the album. At the end of February 1880, Buchta returned to Khartoum by steamer and thence to Europe. His photographs appear to be the earliest made in Bunyoro and were later reproduced as engravings (often without acknowledgement) by numerous explorers and writers. Buchta had expressed a wish to return to the Sudan when he had the means, but does not appear to have left Europe again. The above notes on Buchta's movements in Africa come largely from H. B. Thomas's article, 'Richard Buchta and early photography in Uganda,' ('The Uganda Journal,' vol. 24, no. 1, March 1960, pp. 114-119).A number of photographs from this collection were also reproduced in Wilhelm Junker, ' Dr Wilh. Junkers Reisen in In Afrika 1875-1886' (3 volumes, Vienna, 1889-91).