Photographs mostly made on Matthew Williams Stirlingʹs New Guinea expedition, Edward A. Salisburyʹs expedition to Micronesia, as well as trips made by Irving Johnson, Ray Jewell, and Cyril von Baumann. They include images of expedition members, scenic views, and indigenous peoples of New Guinea, Micronesia, and other Oceanic islands.
The Pond Bureau was a lecture bureau in New York City which probably collected these photographs from its lecturers. Irving Johnson was a Massachusetts-based professional sailor, author, lecturer, and adventurer who mostly traveled around the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and the Cape of Good Hope. Matthew Williams Stirling was a Smithsonian ethnologist and archeologist who spent the early part of his career conducting research in New Guinea and Ecuador. Edward A. Salisbury was a wealthy filmmaker who sailed around the South Pacific for documentary footage in the 1920s. And Cyril von Baumann was an explorer, naturalist, and archeologist.
The collection is open for research.
Access to the collection requires an appointment.
Copy prints and negatives in this collection have been obtained for reference purposes only. Contact the repository for terms of use and access.
Photo lot 82-11, Pond Bureau photograph collection relating to Oceania, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
Copy prints made by Smithsonian Institution, circa 1985.
Copy negatives probably made by Pacific Prints, a dealer in Waliuku, Hawaii, circa 1981.
Original prints for copy negatives probably in National Library of New Guinea.
Donated by Prints Pacific in Waliuku, Hawaii, through Susan Halas, 1981.
Additional photographs by Stirling can be found in the National Anthropological Archives in Photo Lot 24 and the Matthew Williams Stirling papers.
Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea holds the Irving and Electa Johnson Collection.
Photographs published in Matthew Williams Stirling, "The Native Peoples of New Guinea," Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies vol. 9, 1943; Edward A. Salisbury and Merian C. Cooper, The Sea Gypsy, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1924; Irving Johnson and Electa Johnson, Sailing to See: Picture Cruise in the Schooner Yankee, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1939; Irving Johnson, Yankee's People and Places, New York: Norton, 1955.