The Caribbean vacation photograph album contains 110 commercially produced photographs compiled by an unidentified traveler during visits to several Caribbean countries and territories.
The Caribbean vacation photograph album contains 110 photographs compiled by an unidentified traveler during visits to several Caribbean countries and territories.
The album (30.5 x 25.5 cm) is bound with gray leather. All photographs are unmounted and most are accompanied by hand-written and printed captions including dates. It remains unclear whether the dates listed with captions (ranging from 1892 to 1897) refer to when a photograph was originally taken or when the photograph was acquired by the album's anonymous compiler. Certain photographs appear to have possibly been reproductions of earlier daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, etc. Most images were commercially produced by professional photographers, some of whom are identified in captions.
Caribbean locations represented include Cuba, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Barbados, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, and Curacao. Also present are views of Caracas, Venezuela, as well as St. Augustine and Rock Ledge in Florida. In addition to street scenes, landscapes, occupational portraits, and architectural views, there are also numerous images depicting local civilians engaged in various activities, including many portraits of Afro-Caribbean men, women, and children.
Contents include views of the Alcazar Hotel and a slave market building in St. Augustine; a silk tree, The Queen's Staircase, and a banana garden in Nassau; views of Columbus Cathedral, Columbus Memorial Chapel, the Tomb of Columbus, an Afro-Caribbean stagecoach driver, Moro Castle, and Our Lady of Mercy Church in Havana, Cuba; the Cienfuegos Cathedral and plaza; a group of people performing a "Zapatec Dance (sic)"; views of the steamers Orinoco and Trinidad likely shown docked in Hamilton Harbour, Bermuda; the Princess Hotel, Harrington Sound, Pyramid Rock, Hungary Bay, Tucker's Cave, "Queen Cave," and St. Peter's Church in Bermuda; the H.M.S. Tourmaline in the Bermuda floating dry dock; a bird's-eye view of St. George's, Bermuda; a coral rock quarry scene; views of Jamaican scenery including Port Antonio, Annotto Bay, Castleton Garden, a "Negro Cottage," Kingston, the Rio Cobre Hotel, a bog walk in Spanishtown, and a group of Afro-Caribbean sugarcane cutters; "Blue Beard's Castle" on St. Thomas; a group of masqueraders performing in a parade on St. Kitts; a leper hospital on Rat Island, Antigua; a large group portrait of Afro-Caribbean women doing laundry in a river on Guadeloupe; a view of a windmill in Barbados; a studio portrait of an Indo-Trinidadian woman; a view of a coffee plantation in Grenada; a view of La Guaira, Venezuela; and views of Caracas, Venezuela, including the interior of the "American Home" and the house of former president Antonio Guzmán Blanco; views of Curaçao including the harbor; and a studio portrait of an Afro-Caribbean woman posing with water coconuts.