Place

Readjusting the Focus: Exerting Agency Through Clothing

In this photograph taken by American photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942), are eight Negrito young men at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis with a statue of King Louis XIV in the background. As they are in an open field, this photograph could have been taken during the “Anthropology Day” games held by the fair committee to show off the indigenous Filipinos’ skills in various sports games to the public. In this case, the boys would have shown off their skills with a bow and arrow, whose straps can be seen over their shoulders.

Looking back at Leiden: Where was this painting made?

Having visited an antique convention in the Hague a few months ago, I found this postcard being sold that was labeled as being from Leiden. Supposedly a postcard of the city painted in 1934 by artist Bernard van Vlijmen (1895-1972) as indicated on the bottom left corner initials of B.V.Vlijmen, the watercolor art is drawn from the perspective of someone overlooking the cityscape, half of the painting being the city streets and its buildings with people walking by, and the other half being a canal, with everything being interconnected by bridges and walkways.

Indigo Textile Dyeing in Daboya, Ghana

The Indigo Dyeing Tradition in Daboya: Notes from the Field

Daboya is a semi-urban community in the Savanna Region of Ghana. It is well noted for its organic indigo textile dyeing and weaving tradition which dates back to over three centuries. Before the introduction of synthetic dyes, Indigo was the foundation of most textile traditions in West Africa. In Ghana, most of the traditional smock dresses and related fabrics that are worn are produced in Daboya. Below, I present an account of the indigo dyeing process as observed in Daboya in May 2022.

Unsettling Facts You Need to Know about Matrimonial Sites

Femmes for Freedom (FFF) is a feminist organization founded by Shirin Musa in the Hague, Netherlands, in 2011. It aims to defend girls’ and women’s rights and advocate against gender-based violence, particularly, marital captivity (Femmes For Freedom, 2022). FFF noticed that several women victims that reached out to them for help had met their husbands through matrimonial sites, which is a variation of standard dating websites. However, the main focus is on those wanting marriage, instead of simply dating (Soneji, 2022). 

An “Insular” Introspective On Memory & Cross-Cultural Exchanges

The photograph seen here is of the Insular Ice and Cold Storage Plant during its final stages of completion located in Ermita, Manila, Philippines. Inspired by one of Mesha Murali and Surajit Sarkar's accession cards for the Centre for Community Knowledge (CCK)'s Delhi Memory Archive (see related links for the original accession card), I felt inspired to look towards some old photgraphs of Manila from the American colonial period to find some of, what they refered to as "the relational and intangible aspects of the everyday urban experience". This is one such photograph. 

Readjusting the focus: Exercising agency through the Ballangbang cultural dance

In this photograph from the Missouri Historical Society archive, titled by author Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “As God made them… Pierre Chouteau”, it depicts 4 Bontoc Igorot (an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of the Philippines) boys as they dance what is most likely the Ballangbang, a cultural dance performed during mass celebrations and social gatherings.

Readjusting the focus: Who was the other participant involved in the cakewalk dance?

Attached here is an archival photograph from the Missouri Historical Society of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, specifically of indigenous Filipinos from the Cordillera region of northern Luzon known as the Igorots. Titled by American photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942) as “Mrs. Wilkins teaching an Igorrote boy the cakewalk at the 1904 World’s Fair,the photographs presents two people in the image, the eponymous young Igorot boy dancing with Vienna opera singer Mrs. George S. Wilkins, as she teaches him the cakewalk, a popular dance of the time period.

Confronting Transnational Histories and Grappling with Unhealed Histories in Leiden

This image is of the front edifice of the Museum de Lakenhal in Leiden, NL. Carved in the facade are representation of the spinning, weaving, and dyeing process for the historic laken textile produced in Leiden in the Early Modern Era. Through paintings of textiles and their production and the museum is dedicated to telling the history of the laken textile process that was historic to Leiden for centuries until production was halted in 1979.

Bulamari Local Textile Dyers, Maiduguri. Borno State

Field Work to Bulamari Local Dyeing Centre, Maiduguri, Borno State.

Bulamari Dyers are the Kanuri speaking indigenes of Maiduguri, Borno State. They Specializes in the production of the Kanuri tie and dye attires, especially the Kanuri blue and black fabric known as “Dongashou”.

The findings of the survey carried out at Bulamari Dyeing Center, behind the Shehu Palace in Maiduguri, Borno State are as follows:

Beauty is Composite

Beauty is the quality present in a thing or person that gives intense pleasure or deep satisfaction to the mind, it can also be a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, especially the sight.

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