JISC

Rare images showing rituals, festivals and everyday life for isolated tribes in the Himalayas are to be preserved online by JISC and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) for the benefit of researchers, teachers and students. 

Highlights among the 10,000 images include rich textiles and jewellery of the Nagas and the shaman-led rituals and acrobatics of the Apatani tribe.

These extraordinary moments were photographed by a professor of anthropology at SOAS, Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995), who studied tribal cultures in South Asia and the Himalayas from the 1930’s to the 1980’s.

His photographic collection consists of more than 20,000 images of which approximately half, from India and Nepal, are now online for people to browse, download and use non-commercially free of charge.

Digitisation programme officer at JISC, Ben Showers, says: “Life has now changed forever for the tribes that Fürer-Haimendorf photographed, but JISC is safeguarding these collective memories held in the images of the rituals, events and cultural interactions.  This open archive will allow researchers and students working far into the future to have online access to some of these hugely significant moments.”

Visitors to the archive will find a host of resources to guide them through the collection, including biographies, maps, background on the different tribes, and an interview with the photographer, as well as a comprehensive search facility. 

The online archive is the first digitisation project of SOAS's new Centre for Digital Africa, Asia and the Middle East, created in part to make the invaluable archives of the school more widely available. Digitisation is essential for the preservation of fragile material and to give researchers online access to rare or difficult-to-access books, manuscripts, photographs, sound and film recordings.

Stuart Blackburn, the SOAS Centre’s academic coordinator, says: “At a time when tribal cultures are undergoing rapid change, including religious conversion and language loss, these photographs of Fürer-Haimendorf are a valuable resource for the study of change and continuity. From my experience in the area, I know that the tribal peoples themselves, many of whom have computers, will find these images endlessly fascinating.”

After 12 months of archiving, an open day celebrating the launch will take place at SOAS on Friday 30 October. 

Launch event

The launch event for the online archive will include lectures, discussions and an evening reception at which the online collection will be officially opened.

It will be held from 10 am to 6.30 pm on 30 October at SOAS's Brunei Gallery Thornhaugh St., London WC1H 0XG.

Visit the archive

Email this page Bookmark & share this page