Forgotten Colours of the Past

The plate belongs to G. Eric Matson’s East African series of 1936, made during a journey with Imperial Airways. The route followed the Nile toward Lake Victoria. Longido lies in northern Tanganyika, now Tanzania, in a region long associated with Maasai communities. In colour, the metal ear ornaments, beads and clothing are especially striking and became some of the most distinctive motifs in Matson’s African series.

Negatives from this collection marked the beginning of the Color-Screen project. While preparing an exhibition for the Šechtl & Voseček Museum of Photography in 2011, Mark Jacobs recognised that some inconspicuous plates in the Matson archive were Finlay colour negatives. This photograph also shows that the Finlay process could already capture livelier situations: the girl and dog are sharp while the wagging tail is blurred. The exact exposure time is unknown, but in sunlight it was probably a few hundredths of a second — the dog still had to cooperate for a moment. In 2025 the Library of Congress made new full-quality scans of these samples available.

The photograph belongs to Matson’s East African journey of 1936. The American Colony Photo Department was based in Jerusalem, but its photographers travelled far beyond the Middle East. This series was made during a journey with Imperial Airways into East Africa. For this negative the Library of Congress also preserves a Finlay colour transparency precisely registered with its viewing screen. While preparing the exhibition we were able to examine the original; its colours are noticeably richer than in the older catalogue scan.