De beers’s diamond mine in the 1880s: Robert Harris and the kimberley searching system

In the mid 1880s a little-known photographer named Robert Harris produced a series of albumen prints showing the stages of body searching that black labourers in De Beers diamond mines were obliged to undergo by state ordinance enacted in 1883. The original photographs surfaced briefly in the saleroom in 2007 but have since disappeared. Two sets of copies survive. Bearing in mind the history of documentary photography in South Africa, this article examines the historical and textual significance of this series of photographs in the context of the history of mining and discusses the imperatives and ethics of locating, researching, and publishing controversial imagery in the Internet age.