Photographer: Goldstein, Henri (1920-2014).
Title: untitled (Groupe de femmes Mangbetu).
Date: 1948.
Country: Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Medium: unmounted gelatin silver print.
Size: 17,1 x 24,0 cm.
Condition: very good.
Reference: HGV1118/1
Provenance: Belgian vintage photography dealer.
Extra: typed note with identification in French and Dutch on verso. Congopresse 31.63/8.
A group of Mangbetu women, recognizable by their artificially elongated skulls, performing the nebaiandra. This is a circular dance meant to keep evil spirits away from the village. Their adornment consists of a cloth of cotton or worked bark, dyed black, and the nogbo made of braided leaves that covers their loins. Some wear around their ankles strings of cauris, which mark the rhythm of their dance steps.
Location: Mangazizi.
Territory: Mangbetu.
District: Uélé.
Province: Haut-Uélé (former Province Orientale)
Henri Goldstein (1920 – 2014) was an apprentice at the Belgian press agency Acta from the age of 14. Working in the Congo, he became a renowned photographer of equatorial wildlife. In this capacity, he accompanied American scientific expeditions and exhibited in New York. During the war he was a prisoner of war in Germany, notably in the fortress of Colditz in Saxony, then in the disciplinary camp 1446 Torfwerk in the Himmelmoor near Hamburg, and thus escaped the extermination camps, even though he was Jewish. He returned to Leopoldville in 1947 and became head of the photography department of the colonial information service until the colony unexpectedly gained its independence in 1960. At the end of 1992, he published his memories under the title "Les maillons de la chaîne" (Ed. Dricot).