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Album of one hundred gelatin silver prints of the Philippines and China.

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A fascinating album documenting the Philippines – its towns, street scenes, indigenous peoples, and landscapes – in the early days of American colonial rule, likely compiled by an American officer stationed in the islands.

The album opens with twenty-two photographs of China – showing the Great Wall, Tianjin, Shanghai, and many scenes from Peking – possibly collected on the outbound trip. The seventy-eight images that follow form a wide-ranging and valuable portrait of life in the early days of the American-ruled Philippines. Manila is seen in many guises: San Sebastian Church, canals, the old city wall, Plaza Goiti (now Plaza Lacson) and Plaza Cervantes, the Army and Navy Club, markets, and a cockfight. Then twenty-two photographs of the Ifugao, Igorot, and Kalinga, indigenous peoples of the Cordillera region of northern Luzon, showing their houses, dress, dance, a ‘dog feast’, and the ‘method of Igorrote execution’. Also documented are the new establishments erected by the Americans: Camp John Hay and the Mansion House in Baguio, Haight’s Place near Atok, and Fort Mills in Manila Bay.

The album ends with eight small amateur photographs, likely taken by the compiler or an associate, showing Americans posing at two scenic spots, play-boxing, and diving off a cliff, as well as several landscapes and a townscape.