STARR, Frederick. Congo Natives: An Ethnographic Album. Chicago: Printed for the Author by the Lakeside Press, 1912 Roy.4to. 38pp. 130 collotype plates, (many with two or more photographs), map.

Frederick Starr (1858 – 1933) was curator of the American Museum of Natural History’s ethnological collection from 1889 to 1891. He then became the first anthropologist to hold a position at the University of Chicago, where he remained until 1923. Starr did anthropological fieldwork in Mexico, Liberia, the Congo, the Philippines, and in the United States. These very interesting photographs represent part of the results of an expedition into the Congo Free State in 1905-06, which consisted of the author and Manuel Gonzales, who was responsible for the photographs, apart from 13 taken by missionaries at Ikoko, Bolobo and Upoto. They spent just over a year studying various peoples and amassed an ethnographical collection of over three thousand five hundred pieces which was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History. The photographs depict individuals, groups, village scenes, arts, crafts, etc. An un-numbered copy from an edition of 350 copies. A very nice copy in the publisher’s green cloth with the gilt lettering to spine and upper board.