A Treasury of Caribbean History

Jamaican Women, ca 1900 16.51 cm x 21.59 cm gelatin silver print, unknown photographer

The Art Gallery of Ontario has acquired one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of historical Caribbean photographs, consisting of more than 3,500 prints, postcards, daguerreotypes, lantern slides, albums and stereographs.

J.W. Cleary, Coconut Palms, Kingston Harbour, ca 1895, 17.53 cm x 23.11 cm. Gelatin silver print.

Collected by New York-based filmmaker and collector Patrick Montgomery, the historical archive covers a century (1840 to 1940). The acquisition was made possible in part by more than $300,000 in contributions from a group of 27 donors, the majority from Toronto’s Black and Caribbean communities.

Unknown, Glendairy Prison Officials, Barbados, 1909. 13.97 cm x 19.69 cm, albumen print.

One of the largest collections of such images, it brings to life the changing economies and communities that emerged following the abolition of slavery across the region – Art Gallery of Ontario

More on The Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs, here.

A good CBC feature, here.