Through a Glass, Darkly

Photographs of the Leipzig Mission from East Africa, 1896–1939

The book presents photographs taken in what is now northern Tanzania by Lutheran missionaries from Leipzig in the first four decades of the twentieth century. It touches briefly upon certain fields of everyday life (gender, medicine, schools, architecture, “other” customs) and upon ways in which photographs were used for publicity. Longer chapters deal with the portrayal of missionary children, of music and dance, as well as of landscape.
The book is of potential interest to historians of colonial Africa, historians of photography, historians of Christian mission, and people in northern Tanzania.