Photos and Phantasms

By Petrine Archer Straw

Subjects: Exhibitions, Pictorial works, Photograph collections, Royal Geographical Society (Great Britain)

Description: Photos and Phantasms is the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of the same name. The exhibition comprised photographs reproduced from British Colonial Sir Harry Johnston's archive held at the Royal Geographical Society in London. In 1908 Harry Johnston, a British geographer, was asked by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt to research the condition of Negroes in the Americas. Johnston's visit to the region resulted in a book titled Negro in the New World, published in 1911. Almost 90 years after Johnston toured the Caribbean with his companion Arthur Greaves, his photographs were exhibited in those islands where they were first taken.