#3416: Rare library addition: Rhoda Metraux Photographic Album

[Robert Corbett <bcorbett@netcom.com>]

>From Bob Corbett: 

Today's UPS brought a package I had been waiting for with bated breath.  
It is quite a rare find.  I'll just copy in the dealer's description.  
It is accurate, but doesn't capture the increadible neatness of the 
scrapbook.  The drawings are simply awesome.  Later this summer when I 
get more time I'll try to scan some of the drawings and photos.  I'm not
very good at scanning images!

This is NOT a published item, but Rhoda Metraux's own personal scrapbook
of photos and drawings.  I could find no dates in the book.

The item is:  

Metraux, Rhoda Bubendey. : 
Photographic Album. ; Blue cloth album, (a 
Book Shelf Scrap Book), 8vo, with the label MM/RM 211 on front pastedown 
(from Rhoda Metraux's collaboration with Margaret Mead in the 1940s). 
Album of 137 photographs and three drawings, with a detailed cyanotype 
map of the Isle de la Tortue taped in. The drawings are blue and red 
pencil vives (symbols) for the voodoo spirits Legba, Erzulie Freda, Brave 
Guede. The black and white photographs (2 3/8 x 2 3/8 in. , 3 1/2 x 5 
in., and 1 3/4 x 1 1/2 in.) are mostly identified by pen annotations. 
Includes Port au Prince, Mt. L'Hospital, Ville Bonheur (with a procession 
celebrating the Virgin of Carmel), Port de Paix, many shots of La Tortue, 
Basse Terre, and La Vallie. Many images of people involved in daily 
activities, (preparing manioc, farming, bathing). One section is dated 
November 1944; photographs may also include some taken during the 
Metraux's honeymoon on Haiti in the summer of 1941, when Alfred Metraux 
visited the Isle de la Tortue, off the coast of Haiti, with Jacques 
Roumain. Rhoda Metraux, the American anthropologist, was married to 
Alfred Metraux, also an anthropologist. Rhoda did her dissertation (Kith 
and Kin, 1951) based on her work in Haiti; Alfred became an expert on the 
area, and wrote an essential book on the subject, Voodoo in Haiti (1959).