The historical images in the International Mission Photography Archive come from Protestant and Catholic missionary collections held at a number of centers in Britain, Europe, and North America. The photographs record missionary endeavors and reflect the missionaries’ experience of communities and environments abroad. There are examples of the physical influence the mission presence brought –seen in churches and their surrounding settlements– as well as examples of the cultural impact of mission teaching and Western influence, including schools, hospitals, training programs, Christian practices, and Western technology and fashions. The pictures document indigenous peoples’ responses to missions and the history of indigenous churches which are often now a major force in society. They also offer views of traditional culture, landscapes, cities, and towns before and in the early stages of modern development.
Resources Available:
- Historical Photographs from the Basel Mission (30,262 items)
http://www.mission-21.org/
The archives of mission 21 / Basel Mission contain historical photographs, written records, printed and hand-drawn maps, and building plans. This collection is a very important resource for research in many academic fields such as general history and church history, social and cultural anthropology, geography, environmental sciences and linguistics. The cross-linking of available information is one of the goals in the process of improving the degree of accessibility of these materials.The collection of historical photographs contains images from the early years of photography to the middle of the 20th century, including 28,400 images that are digitally accessible. The images were taken in the historic Basel Mission fields in Africa and Asia, with a principal focus on Ghana, Cameroon, South India (mainly Karnataka and Kerala), South China (mainly Hakka-speaking parts of the Guangdong province and Hong Kong), and Kalimantan. - Photographs from Abilene Christian University, Abilene, Texas, 1899-1969 (1,765 items)
Abilene Christian University, located in Abilene, Texas, was established in 1906. It is affiliated with the Churches of Christ, a tradition stemming from religious reforms in the early 19th century in the United States led by Alexander Campbell and Barton W. Stone. Churches of Christ practice an independent polity, an emphasis on Scripture, baptism by immersion of believers, weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper, and a cappella singing. Therefore practices of study and of baptism are frequently depicted in the photographs. - Photographs from DM-Échange et Mission (2,947 items)
Département Missionaire in Lausanne, Switzerland (DM-échange et mission) is a consortium of Protestant missionary organizations, chief among them Mission Suisse en Afrique du Sud, founded in 1875. The archive in Lausanne has important collections of materials from southern Africa, covering the period from 1875 until the 1970s. DM-échange et mission continues to be active in that region. The photographs available in IMPA are predominantly from Mozambique and South Africa. - Photographs from Scottish Missions, the National Library of Scotland (3,155 items)
The images available here are a representative selection from an estimated 40,000 photographic prints, slides and glass negatives. Dating from the 1870s to the mid-20th century, the photographs record activity in those regions that the Church of Scotland was most strongly represented, principally parts of Eastern Africa, India and China, but also for other areas such as the Pacific Islands. Also included are the photographs of Rev Dr Archibald Clive Irvine. Assigned as a medical missionary in 1922 to Chogoria, Kenya, Dr Irvine oversaw the development of the mission from a single house to a thriving community. Irvine’s photographs document this development, as well as his service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in support of the King’s African Rifles and the Carrier Corps during the First World War. - Photographs from the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh, U.K., ca.1900-ca.1940s (1,498 items)
The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (CSWC) was established in the University of Aberdeen in 1982 under the original title, the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World. In 1986-7 the Centre moved with its founder, Professor Andrew F. Walls, to the University of Edinburgh, where it has been ever since. The founding vision of the Centre was of a resource which could record and facilitate research into the remarkable growth of Christianity in the non-Western world over the last two centuries. In pursuit of this vision the Centre has acquired a range of archival collections, including those of the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, the Sudan United Mission, and the Evangelical Union of South America. Most of the images from the collections to be found on the IMPA website are of lantern slides used in missionary deputations, particularly by the Church of Scotland and the Regions Beyond Missionary Union. They cover a variety of locations, being particularly strong on China, India, Calabar, Jamaica, and Peru. - Photographs from the Yale Divinity School Library, New Haven, Connecticut, ca.1880-1950 (10,113 items)
http://www.library.yale.edu/div/DayMissions.html
Photographs in this collection were selected from the archival and manuscript holdings of the Day Missions collection at the Yale University Divinity School Library, which include several thousand photographs documenting missionary and educational work in China from the late 19th century to 1950. Photographs in the archives of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia focus on the work of the thirteen colleges and universities founded by Protestant mission agencies in China. Photographs in the personal papers of missionaries, who served under a variety of agencies in numerous provinces, provide a broad-based view of the spectrum of Protestant mission work in China. Medical, educational, and evangelistic endeavors are documented, as well as famine relief, rural reconstruction, athletics, and other aspects of the lives and work of American and British missionaries, and their Chinese students and colleagues. - Photographs of Emil Müller, 1893-1933 (321 items)
Emil Müller (1868-1940) served the Leipzig Mission in Machame (now northern Tanzania) from 1893 to 1920 and from 1931 to 1933. - Photographs of the Archives and Manuscripts Division, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, ca.1860-1950 (2,118 items)
http://www.soas.ac.uk/library/archives/collections/#MissionaryCollections
The selection from around 30,000 prints and 5,000 lantern slides held in the missionary society collections at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is a representative sample of images from Africa, China, the Caribbean, Madagascar, South India, and Papua-New Guinea. The photographs come from the collections of the Council for World Mission (formerly the London Missionary Society), the Methodist Missionary Society, the China Inland Mission (now the Overseas Missionary Fellowship) and the Presbyterian Church of England (now the United Reformed Church). Some of the photographs were taken by missionary workers in the field, such as the lay mission worker, John Parrett (1841-1918) who served as a printer for the London Missionary Society in Madagascar from 1862 to 1885 and Rev. Harry Moore Dauncey (1863-1932) who served with the L.M.S. in Papua New Guinea, mainly in the Delena district, for forty years from 1888 to 1928. On occasion, missionary officers from headquarters on tours of the mission fields would take photographs. Many of the photographs in the Methodist Missionary Society Collection were taken by Frank Deaville Walker (1878-1945) editor of the Methodist Missionary Society’s journals, The Foreign Field, 1914-1932, and its successor The Kingdom Overseas 1933-1945. There are also images collected or purchased by missionaries whilst overseas, such as the collection of fine albumen prints of China in the early 1860s taken by an unknown Russian photographer. - Photographs of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Maryknoll, New York, 1912-1945 (7,598 items)
http://maryknollmissionarchives.org/
The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, Inc. (Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers) was established in 1911 at Maryknoll, New York and sent its first missionaries to China in 1918. The photographic archive, established to support The Field Afar magazine and later Maryknoll, contains between 1 and 1.5 million prints, lantern slides, glass negatives, and slides that capture mission activities in 38 different countries. The Maryknoll Mission Archives was established as a collaborative venture in 1990 to care for the records and images of the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, Maryknoll Sisters and the Maryknoll Lay Missioners. Digitized images are confined to the China series of images dated 1912-1945. - Photographs of the Danmission, Copenhagen, Denmark (12,707 items)
http://danmission.dk/
Danmission has ties dating back to 1821 making it the world’s oldest mission organization. Formed in 2000 from the merging of the two oldest Danish missionary societies, the Danish Missionary Society (DMS) and the Danish Santalmission (DSM), Danmission combined the archives and resources of its two predecessors which now includes about 50,000 photographs (including glass mounted photographs) from missions in countries in Asia and Africa. The photographs are in the process of being digitized and cataloged and publicly available at http://fotoarkiv.danmission.dk/fotoweb/. - Photographs of the Défap – Service protestant de mission, Paris, ca. 1880-1971 (11,018 items)
Founded in 1971, the Défap-Service protestant de mission in Paris has inherited the library and archive.of the Société des missions évangéliques de Paris (SMEP), known in English as the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society (PEMS). The Society had been active between 1822 and 1971 in the following regions of the world: the Pacific Ocean: New Caledonia, Tahiti; Africa: Cameroon, Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville, Togo, Zambia, Southern Africa, Lesotho, Madagascar. It sent its first missionaries to Southern Africa in 1829.The library collection comprises 21,000 monographs and leaflets, 1,300 titles of archived periodicals. The archive includes paper archives – correspondence, reports, candidates’ papers, private diaries, original linguistic research, published and unpublished manuscripts, etc. The iconographic archive consists of some 20,000 photographs taken over a period of one century (1860-1970), a collection of post cards issued by several missionary societies, maps, posters, illustrated tracts, films. 18,000 images have been digitized in 2008/2009 of which 6,500 (Madagascar, Cameroon and Gabon) have now been integrated into the IMPA site. - Photographs of the Hermannsburg Mission, 1888-1958 (1,012 items)
The Hermannsburg Mission (Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk Hermannsburg), is a branch of the Evangelisch-lutherisches Missionswerke (ELM) in Lower Saxony. The archive includes an inventory of photographs from Western and Southwestern Ethiopia dating from the period 1927-1958. - Photographs of the Leipzig Mission, Germany, ca.1912-1917 & ca.1924-1938 (1,818 items)
http://www.lmw-mission.de/de/index.html
The Leipzig Mission (Evangelisch-Lutherisches Missionswerk Leipzig e.V.), founded in 1836, has been and still is active principally in East Africa, India, and Papua-New Guinea. The archive in Leipzig possesses some 20,000 photos, including about 3,500 from Northeast Tanzania, notably Kilimanjaro, Arusha and Pare. Digitized images from this collection concentrate on the photographs supplied by the missionaries Wilhelm Guth (who worked mainly in Pare, 1913-17 and 1927-38) and Leonhard Blumer (active mainly in Arusha, 1912-13 and 1924-26). In addition a few colored postcards published by the Mission, probably before World War One, were also digitized. - Photographs of the Mission and Diakonia Archives, VID Specialized University, Stavanger, Norway, ca.1870-1950 (2,872 items)
https://www.vid.no/en/historical-archive/
The photograph collection of the Mission and Diakonia Archives is mainly related to the work of the Norwegian Mission Society (formerly known as Norwegian Missionary Society), founded in Stavanger in 1842. Overall, the collection comprises approximately 300,000 items from ca.1870-1950, including photograph albums, glass plate negatives, and lantern slides. Among the regions represented are South Africa (KwaZulu-Natal), Madagascar, China (Hunan, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Cameroon (Adamawa Province), Japan, Ethiopia, and Norway. Following the merger of School of Mission and Theology with VID in 2016, the photograph collection will expand into areas of diakonal and other Christian health care ministries in Norway and abroad. Digitized images in the collection on IMPA currently include pictures from Madagascar, South Africa and Cameroon. - Photographs of the Moravian Church, Herrnhut, Germany, ca.1890-1940 (2,911 items)
http://www.archiv.ebu.de/index_e.html
The mission photographs of the Moravian Church (Evangelische Brüder-Unität) are part of the collection physically housed in the Unitätsarchiv, Herrnhut, Germany (previously German Democratic Republic). The Church was established in 1722 and was the first Protestant missionary society to send its agents to West and South Africa. Digitized photographs from this collection focus on two missionary fields in Africa: “Nyasa”, in what is now southern Tanzania, and “South Africa West”, the area north and east of Cape Town. The bulk of these photographs date from the period 1890-1940, with the peak lying in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
See also “A Visual Interpretation of Photos Taken from the Basel Mission Picture Archive,” Emmanuel Akyeampong
University of Southern California Libraries
