[Businesses in Johannesburg, South Africa]

To the savvy shopper in boom-time Johannesburg, this business directory presented an abundance of consumer pleasures. Those in search of a saddle, a salve, or a pair of snakeskin slippers could find a purveyor in the pages of this album. Lush cyanotypes offer a sampling of wares, showing store interiors filled from floor to ceiling with mass-market imports and local specialties. Light catches cut crystal in a lamp showroom, and shoes dangle from display racks in a cobbler’s shop. Hunting trophies line the walls of a curio store, which boasts an artful array of ostrich feathers and a selection of spooled pelts sold by the bolt. Opposite the photographs, merchants spell out their stock in declarative letterpress: the Boozleman Philately House promotes “the greatest rarities” to stamp collectors, while W.E. Burmester & Co. claims “fancy goods of all descriptions,” not least of which are “LAMPS! LAMPS!! LAMPS!!!” Seen together, these ads catalogue the abundance of 1890s Johannesburg, newly founded and flourishing from discoveries of coal and gold.


Directories such as this were often illustrated in cyanotype, a photographic process familiar from architectural blueprints. Requiring no darkroom or developing chemicals, cyanotypy offered trade photographers a quick and crisp means of making images with minimal fuss. Used in the same period to document Johannesburg’s burgeoning mining industry, the process here illustrates its spoils.