Forgotten Colours of the Past

Yvette Borup Andrews was the official photographer of the American Museum of Natural History’s first Asiatic Zoological Expedition of 1916–1917. She had studied photography in Germany, France, Italy and New York, paying particular attention to natural-colour work. On the way to China the expedition spent three weeks in Japan during the cherry-blossom season; Roy Chapman Andrews later wrote that, for anyone interested in colour photography, Japan at that moment was a “veritable paradise”.

Andrews devoted an entire chapter of Camps and Trails in China to photographing Tibetans, entitled “Stalking Tibetans with a Camera”. She wrote that, of all the people they tried to photograph, Tibetans were the most difficult. Money and small gifts often failed, and travellers made long detours to avoid the motion-picture camera beside the road. When persuasion failed, Yvette photographed from concealment behind bushes with a camera focused in advance on a chosen spot.

The book describes several waterfowl shoots during the journey through Yunnan. Along the Yangtze they took mallards and ruddy shelducks, then commonly called “brahminy ducks” in English. During one of the last shoots of the year, Yvette called incoming flocks with a small horn of wood and bone while Andrews shot from concealment beside the water. Roy Chapman Andrews later became famous for the American Museum of Natural History Central Asiatic Expeditions. The Museum notes that he is often mentioned as a possible model for the cinematic Indiana Jones, although no direct link to the filmmakers has been firmly documented.

The Andrews party reached Ta-li Fu after nine days on the road from Yunnan Fu. In the book they recall first seeing the three slender pagodas beneath the Tsang-shan range and then the city gate. In the late-afternoon light it seemed almost unreal, even as they rode through its arch onto the stone-paved main street. A black-and-white reproduction of this view appeared in Camps and Trails in China under the title “The Gate and Main Street of Ta-li Fu”.

The Three Pagodas beneath the Tsang-shan range were among the most conspicuous landmarks of Ta-li Fu, and Andrews describes seeing them as the party approached the city. At the end of the expedition he called the Paget plates one of its most interesting results. He praised their rendering of delicate atmospheric shading and their resistance to wide variations in temperature and climate. The last plates were exposed in Burma about a year and a half after manufacture without visible deterioration, even though some ordinary negatives brought from America had been ruined. The expedition returned to the American Museum of Natural History with 150 Paget natural-colour plates, 500 other photographic negatives and 10,000 feet of motion-picture film.