Griff Davis began working as a photo-journalist whilst still a student at Morehouse College, the famous all black college of Atlanta, working for the Atlanta Daily World, Time & Ebony. Martin Luther King was a fellow Morehouse student in the mid-40s, and Langston Hughes was one of Davis’s principal professors, who was to become a life-long friend. After graduation he became Ebony’s first Roving Editor, writing and shooting his own pieces, but left to study at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. The only black student in his class, he received his MA in 1949. From 1949-52 he worked as a photo-journalist for the Black Star agency and as stringer for the New York Times, travelling extensively in Africa, Europe and America. It was at this time that his long-time relationship with Liberia began. In 1952 the Republic of Liberia sponsored Davis’ one-man show “Liberia, 1952” at the American Museum of Natural History, and in the years that followed he produced three documentary films including one narrated by the then unknown actor Sidney Poitier. It was also in 1952 that he had joined the US Foreign Service, pioneering Truman’s Point 4 foreign aid programme. He worked for many years in Africa before returning to America to take up the appointment of Director of the Information, Education and Communications branch of the Office of Population at USAID HQ in Washington. The present collection of images was produced to promote the partnership between the Liberian Government and Landsell Christie’s Liberia Mining Company in exploiting iron ore in the Bomi Hills region. Images include Christie and President Tubman signing the concession deal; construction work on the railway from Monrovia, which at $10m was the investor’s major cost in the project; “native labor” in the Company saw-mill; the Free Port of Monrovia; & views of the mining area itself. In 1993 on receiving a life-time award from his college Davis said of himself; “I’m not a philosopher, nor am I a deep thinker. I’m just an observer of life, an observer of how people act and how people work.” A fair self-appraisal of his clear-eyed, documentary style. Typed label to the upper cover and inked inscription on the “title page”, show that this copy came from the Republic Steel Corporation, who became involved in the project in 1951, eventually owning about 60% of the shares of LMC.
Folio (370 × 315mm), Ful-Vu spiral-bound binder in limp brown naugahyde. Photoreproduced map and 20 large Gelatin silver prints, c. 330 × 275mm, contained in acetate pockets with typed captions mounted opposite. Very good.
