Camera Trails in Africa: A Photographer's Safari in British East Africa

by Martin Johnson

Overview

Martin and Osa Johnson went to British East Africa in the 1920’s in order to photograph wild animals, many of which were disappearing with the advances of civilization. They ended up falling in love with the country, and did not want to return to the United States.

It is easy to imagine why, considering the Johnsons spent their days wandering around the bush, camping and trekking and photographing. Each morning they ventured out with their cameras to stalk snorting rhinos or magnificent lions against the backdrop of the golden-brown plains and turquoise skies.

But don’t imagine that Johnson’s life as a photographer was always peaceful. At one point, he describes cranking up the motion picture camera as a lion prepares to spring. Later on, Osa saves Martin’s life from a herd of stampeding elephants—all for the sake of the perfect picture.

Although most of the area they covered was uninhabited by people, they did have many African servants who accompanied them on their travels, and they encountered Masai and other tribes along the way.

Martin Johnson was once a member of Jack London’s boat crew, and may have picked up some skills from that famous author. Camera Trails in Africa is a beautifully-written book, and makes you want to “safari off to some country that is still God’s country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789125498
Publisher:	Muriwai Books
Publication date:	12/05/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	231
Sales rank:	227,145
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Martin Elmer Johnson (1884-1937) and his wife Osa Helen Johnson (1894-1953) were American adventurers and documentary filmmakers who captured the public’s imagination through their films and books of adventure in exotic, faraway lands. Photographers, explorers, marketers, naturalists and authors, Martin and Osa studied the wildlife and people of East and Central Africa, the South Pacific Islands and British North Borneo. They explored then-unknown lands and brought back film footage and photographs, offering many Americans their first understanding of these distant lands.

Martin was born on October 9, 1884 in Rockford, Illinois and grew up in the Kansas towns of Lincoln and Independence. He read a magazine article by Jack London—American novelist, journalist, and social activist—in which he described his plans to travel the world in a thirty-foot boat. On the Snark, which sailed around the world from 1907-1909, Johnson worked as the lead cook and bottle washer. He later started a traveling road show that toured the U.S. displaying photographs and artifacts collected on the voyage. He met his wife Osa during one of his tours in Osa’s hometown of Chanute, Kansas, and the couple were married in May 1910 in Independence.

The Johnsons spent the next 7 years touring with Martin’s travelogue in the U.S., Europe and Africa. Martin published his book Through the South Seas With Jack London in 1913, and the Johnsons made a series of documentary films, featuring mostly African and South Sea tribal groups and wildlife, including Simba: The King of the Beasts (1928), Across the World with Mr. and Mrs. Johnson (1930), Wings Over Africa (1934) and Borneo (1937).

Martin Johnson was killed in a plane crash near the Los Pinetos peak in California on January 13, 1937, aged 52.

The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum opened in 1961 in Chanute, Kansas and houses a collection of about 10,000 Johnson photographs and many of his films.

Read an Excerpt

Martin and Osa Johnson went to British East Africa in the 1920's in order to photograph wild animals, many of which were disappearing with the advances of civilization. They ended up falling in love with the country and as soon as they got back to the U.S. they wanted to return:

"I have been home just four months, and as soon as I can I am going back. I know exactly the spot I will make for. It lies away out in the 'blue,' a good thousand miles' trek from Nairobi...It is paradise, literally as well as figuratively."

It is no wonder that Johnson came to love British East Africa so much, considering that he got to spend his days wandering around in the bush, stalking such awesome creatures in such incredible settings as these:

"Can you imagine a parched brown plain rolling off to a deep blue line against a turquoise sky, and in the foreground a group of zebras drinking from a pool that is gold in the afternoon sun - perfect little horses, elegantly striped in black and white...a herd of giraffes feeding among the gray-green thorny mimosas, animals eighteen feet tall, their deep burnt-orange hides covered with an irregular network of white lines...ugly rhinos snorting like great angry pigs just outside your hut...big as motor cars...King Lion himself...not the moth-eaten, stupefied lion of the zoo, but a free animal with healthy skin and mane, and an easy step, and live muscles that play visibly under his hide?"

Most of the book is dedicated to describing his adventures as a photographer, waiting all day in a blind to get the perfect photo at a water-hole, or cranking up his motion-picture camera as a lion prepares to spring. Johnson and his wife also have some exciting times hunting animals for meat, like when Osa saves Martin's life from a herd of stampeding elephants. Although most of the area they covered was uninhabited by people, they did have many native servants who accompanied them on their travels, and they encountered Masai and other tribes of people along the way. Johnson sums up his feelings on the native peoples of Africa in certain terms:

"There is something about primitive peoples that appeals to me. I have no illusion about them. I know that they are ignorant and filthy in their habits and often, from my point of view, immoral. But for all that, a savage untouched by civilization has dignity. He is himself. I respect him as a human being. His code is not my code, but unless he has been contaminated by association with whites, he usually lives up to it. And that is more than you can say for the majority of people in civilized countries."

Martin was once a member of Jack London's boat crew (see Cruise of the Snark, available from The Narrative Press), and may have picked up some skills from that famous author: Camera Trails in Africa is a beautifully-written book. It makes you want to "safari off to some country that is still God's country" and not only that, it makes sitting perfectly still in the bushes for twelve hours sound like a lot of fun.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	1
1	The Uganda Railway	9
2	Headquarters in Nairobi	21
3	Fisherman's Luck	39
4	John Walsh's Place	55
5	The Bravest Animal in Africa	71
6	On the Trail of the Elephants	93
7	A Motorist's Story	109
8	Into the "Blue"	125
9	Isiolo	141
10	The Big Cats at Rattray's	151
11	Hardship	169
12	Homelife in the Wilderness	185
13	Seeing Africa from a Blind	197
14	Rhinos	215
15	Archer's Post	225
16	The Desert Trail	233
17	Marsabit	247
18	Lake Paradise	257
19	The End and the Beginning	277