Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Old Photographs of Batsbis in Tsovata

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These three photographs seem to have been sold as some sort of souvenir, perhaps of “A Visit to Tsovata”. The prints were framed with cardboard, and were almost certainly destined to be hung on walls. (The photographs may also have been taken as part of an ethnographic expedition, and have found their way onto people’s walls at a later date.)
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The photographs [web_mikeladze_]”01” and “46” were clearly taken in succession, as they share the same background, and the bearded figure standing in “01” is seated in “47”. Equally, the woman standing on the left in “01” can be seen standing on the right in “46”.
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To judge from the clothes and the apparent condition of the people photographed, the predominance of wood and stone (local slate) to the exclusion of any other building material, and the steep slope which can be seen in picture “01”, these photographs were most likely taken in situ in a Batsbi village – perhaps in Tsaro or Indurta.
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These clues, in addition to certain technical aspects of the photographs themselves (they are most likely long exposures on glass plates i.e. were taken with an old field-camera), point to a date somewhere in the late nineteenth century, perhaps in the 1880s or 1890s.
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