Genealogies: unpacking the photographic collection of a Natal Midlands farming family (1905 – 1950)

This research explores a collection of family photographs from rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, belonging to the white, English-speaking, Fyvie family. I concentrate on a subset of photographs from the first half of the 20th Century, during which time the family lived on a farm outside of Estcourt, a small agricultural town. This part of the collection is both geographically specific (marking decades passed in a single location), and temporally significant (coinciding roughly with the lead up to, and years of, the Union of South Africa). As such it offers insight into a discrete social microcosm during a particular historical period. What emerges from this study is a strong sense of local identification—a connection to a specific place, and to select people (family, community) in that place—that was nevertheless entangled with broader developments, including aspects of colonial nationalism within the context of the newly formed South Africa, concerns around health and degeneration arising in Europe, developments in scientific farming, and shifting attitudes toward gender. This fragile and dispersed sense of belonging was expressed through an alignment with certain groups of people and ideologies, but also asserted in relation to other groups, most notably black South Africans and, to an extent, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, and ‘poor whites.’Dutch Research Council (NWO)Global Challenges (FSW