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I stumbled across an old auction sale online and saw these really rather interesting photographs, so thought I'd share them. Perhaps someone can tell us something about them or the photographer.

Wow! Amazing photos! I would love to find a similar one of the father of my Great-Grand Mother. His name was Henry Theirs, he was a sapper during the Second Anglo-Boer War. No. 3226. he fought in Cape Colony, Transvaal and Orange Free State.

I'm doing a genealogical investigation about him, I already know the companies he fought in:

* The 2nd. Cheshire Royal Engineers (Railway Volunteers.)
* The 10th Railway Company, Royal Engineers.
* The 31st (Fortress) Company, Royal Engineers.
* The G Company (where he was transferred, 30 Jul 1901).

So, If you find a photo of any of those companies among your collection, please, contact me.

¡I would be so happy to find a photo of Henry!

Thanks again, for the motivation you always give me on this website, I love it !

Regards,

Martina

Another photograph album from a similar source.

Another photograph album from a similar source. Unfortunately the images are not of good enough quality to be able to read the descriptions.

It's the photographs in the first post which I find particularly intriguing. Now I've looked further I've found some of those images elsewhere. Was Van Nes a photographer who made his photographs commercially available?

Can someone tell us more and which units he would have been with to be able to take those photographs?

Ian, the three well-known professional Boer photographers were van Hoepen, Lund Bros, and van Nes. All made commercial prints which were bought by those on both sides wanting to add interest to their albums. They used various dark arts to make photos more exciting, for example the shell exploding in front of a Boer gun is faked (apparently). The captions are sometimes inaccurate. To make things more confusing, copyright for some popular photos seems to have been asserted by more than one photographer.