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Rasharasha: To Africa for a Rose blends family story with history. It contains several themes of worldwide historical significance, but with detail kept necessarily concise.

This article summarises and augments the book’s contents on the theme of wildlife conservation.

Photographic Safaris

In the early 1930s, the hunting safari was a powerful international symbol of adventure and discovery. It was about to acquire a new twist: shooting with a camera instead of a gun.

The Anderson family story reflects the evolution, particularly in East Africa, of tourist and explorer attitudes to wildlife conservation, as influenced by American president Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt. The family members played a part in helping alter perspectives about hunting and game preservation as they were amongst the small but important group of 1930s pioneers of photographic safaris.

Frank Anderson’s passion for photography began as a childhood hobby in the 1890s. His arrival in 1925 in Tanganyika Territory (later Tanzania) proved fortuitous timing that enabled him to put his photographic skills to valuable practical use. In this, as in everything he did, he was greatly helped by his wife, Honor, and daughter, Patricia, while they simultaneously developed their fledgling farm, Rasharasha.

By 1934, serious drought was limiting agricultural production. Suddenly with time on his hands, Frank had an unexpected chance to focus on the need to halt the rampant slaughter of wild animals and to protect them from hunters.

This honourable idea was gaining traction, but as so often is the case, it had a long and chequered history.

Since the 19th century, the likes of missionary explorer David Livingstone had warned against animal slaughter in Africa. Nonetheless, as Europeans settled East Africa, professional hunters were employed by landowners to clear animals from land demarcated for agricultural use. Those known as ‘White Hunters’ offered their services in the form of hunting safaris for visitors to acquire ‘trophies’. These expeditions became increasingly popular among Americans and Europeans, who frequently slaughtered huge numbers of animals to take home heads, horns, or even whole stuffed specimens to adorn their houses. 

Early safaris were on foot, with parties of tourists and their White Hunter supported by innumerable Africans to cook, serve meals and carry camping and photographic equipment.

Those cautioning against this exploitative practice did not go entirely unheeded. By the turn of the century, the concept of game reserves with controlled shooting had appeared in British East Africa (later Kenya). However, British government administrators did not always embrace the idea, partly because many parties profited from hunting. In addition, the operation of game reserves implied dealing with the challenges and dangers of poaching and the ivory trade. White Hunters themselves sometimes worked as ivory hunters with or without hunting permits or license.

It fell to often-prominent individuals of various stripes to take up the cause; among them were keen photographers. Previous early photographs usually recorded a hunter posed with dead prey, thus glorifying the sport, but the first recorded photographic or camera safari for live animals in Africa took place in 1903. Led by a young German named C.G. Schillings, it was not entirely a success, given the primitive nature of photographic equipment at that time used in remote circumstances. 

The Anderson family had a White Hunter friend named Ray Ulyate, who in 1907 guided the American banker, Kenyon Painter, on safari. Ulyate was also employed as White Hunter for the 1910 ‘Buffalo Jones’ expedition to lasso animals for a film. Accompanying that expedition was Cherry Kearton, one of the world’s earliest wildlife photographers and writers. Kearton later made a year-long photographic safari in East Africa, capturing images of live animals in their natural habitat rather than as dead ‘trophies’. Ulyate himself may have been inspired by this expedition with Kearton, for when the Andersons knew him, he was a keen photographer.

The ambivalence of the times was illustrated by the 1909-1911 Smithsonian–Roosevelt African Expedition, which was led by former US President Theodore Roosevelt and also accompanied by Ray Ulyate. Its purpose was to collect specimens for what would become America’s National Museum of Natural History. This expedition collected around 11,400 animal specimens, ostensibly in the name of science, but to some, it was a glorified hunting expedition. Roosevelt himself enjoyed hunting, but he was also an avid conservationist and fully supported attempts to set aside wilderness areas as game reserves.

After World War One, motorized vehicles became available and even though primitive, were an improvement for safari-goers. But they gave rise to indiscriminate game slaughter from moving vehicles.

The Anderson family, farming in Tanganyika Territory, knew about this wholesale killing because their local town was Arusha, the jumping-off point for hunting expeditions to the Serengeti Plains, Ngorongoro Crater, Lake Manyara and other famous regions – later to become game reserves and National Parks.

Tanganyika, German East Africa until 1918, was under a British colonial administration that was still reluctant to address the issue of depleting animal populations.

By the late 1920s, the Andersons’ friend, Ray Ulyate, was manager of the New Arusha Hotel which accommodated safari-goers. Such close contact with participants of the sport made the family aware that wholesale slaughter from moving vehicles did indeed disgust some White Hunters, who greatly respected their prey and thrived on the dance-of-danger between the hunter on foot and the hunted.

Ulyate himself was now photographing wildlife rather than shooting it. He was later quoted in a New York newspaper:**

The New Arusha Hotel’s first guest was Britain’s Prince of Wales, future King Edward VIII, for whom a reception was held in December 1927. The Prince was about to go on safari with Denys Finch Hatton, a man later made famous by the book Out of Africa (Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen, 1937). Finch Hatton was among those appalled by the unequal situation between animals and men in vehicles. He became interested in photography as a form of conservation after taking a wealthy American named Frederick Patterson on a filming safari in East Africa in the mid-1920s.

This interest brought meaning and purpose late in Finch Hatton’s otherwise somewhat unfulfilled life. During two safaris with the Prince of Wales in 1928 and 1930, he converted the future monarch to shooting with a camera rather than a gun. Together, using media contacts and royalty’s sway in London, they persuaded the British government to ban shooting from moving vehicles. They also shamed the government into getting the Serengeti demarcated as a protected game reserve from 1930, with shooting henceforth controlled by game wardens. This built on the conservation attitude that Roosevelt had helped to establish.

The Anderson family were aware of Finch Hatton’s untimely death in a plane crash in 1931, but at least by then, others were taking up the cause of animal conservation, given that hunting had become ever more popular. In 1933, for instance, author Ernest Hemingway shot innumerable animals on safari in Tanganyika with noted White Hunter Philip Percival who had accompanied Roosevelt’s expedition.*

In the early 1930s, Frank Anderson learned that Ray Ulyate had been contacted by the British Government to supply photographs for publicity material to attract tourists to Kenya and Tanganyika Territory. Juggling farming requirements and photographic possibilities, Frank and Honor joined Ray on several camera safaris from May 1934 onwards. Later that year, they set up a business together with two other keen photographers, Captain Hewer and Mr Kipisakis. It was named The Tanganyika Big Game and Tourist Organisation. Frank became an adviser on the safaris to teach visitors how to photograph animals in their natural environment in lighting conditions very different from what they were used to at home.

This helped to create an entirely new sector and interest in wildlife tourism. When people returned home, instead of mounting heads of slaughtered animals on their walls, they mounted photos of live animals.

Author Henry Fosbrooke wrote in 1972 in his book, Ngorongoro – The Eighth Wonder, that Frank Anderson and Ray Ulyate were:

Because photographing game could be even more dangerous than shooting and therefore every bit as exciting, it was necessary for an experienced hunter to lead the safaris. They had to locate the animals and then maintain safety for the tourists taking close-ups of lion, giraffe, rhino and elephant in the days before sophisticated zoom lenses. Whenever possible, Frank’s tourist safaris were guided by Ray Hewlett, the White Hunter who had organized Finch Hatton’s safaris with the Prince of Wales and who had also turned conservationist.

Descriptions of the Andersons’ early camera safaris are included in Rasharasha: To Africa for a Rose, along with the family’s contacts with game wardens of the era such as Philip Teare and Monty Moore, hunting enthusiasts such as Ewart Grogan and Bror Blixen, as well as hunters-turned-conservationists such as JA Hunter and Bobby "Iodine" Ionides.

While Frank took pictures, Honor stood by his side noting down the exposures. His camera was still fairly primitive and the shutter had to remain open long enough to expose the glass negative to sufficient light for the image to be clear and in focus. Noting the exposure length was then critical information needed to develop the photographs correctly and, if possible, take other similar photos.

Frank developed all his photographs in a make-shift darkroom at Rasharasha, working skillfully with the toxic chemicals required and battling with the frequent degradation of materials due to the climate. He was again assisted by Honor. She was a woman with great patience for repetitive tasks and became particularly adept at ‘spotting’ – retouching to correct minor flaws in the finished print with specialist paints and pens.

In the days before mains electricity could be supplied to such a remote place and with the farm strapped for cash, Honor used her own money to buy Frank an ‘electric light plant’ so they could continue working in the evenings on trimming and spotting.

As well as photographing animals, Frank made extensive studies of African people such as the Maasai in their traditional dress and jewellery, at a seminal moment just before World War Two was to bring accelerated change to previously isolated peoples.

The camera safaris provided an unexpected bonus for the family: the sale of photographs helped support their struggling existence at drought-stricken Rasharasha. Frank’s pictures were purchased by a range of people, from tourists to government officials, and even Lady Idina of Kenya’s ‘Happy Valley’ set, married to the Earl of Erroll.

Frank also wrote and illustrated with photographs articles for various publications such as the London Illustrated News and National Geographic. Six of his enlarged photographs were included in an exhibition at London’s British Museum and later in a touring exhibition in the UK. Eventually the cash raised from these efforts helped the family survive.

Of Frank’s photography, author Henry Fosbrooke wrote in 1972:

Meanwhile, prior to World War Two, Frank’s and Honor’s daughter, Patricia, trained in England as a photographer with the goal of making photographic safaris her career. But her return to East Africa in 1936 coincided with Frank’s nomination to serve on Tanganyika’s Legislative Council. Too occupied with politics, he had to withdraw from photographic safaris and Patricia took on much of his farmwork which, with the drought now over, had reverted to its former demanding pace. However, father and daughter took photographs whenever they could find a moment and set themselves up as ‘Frank and Pat Anderson’. Ultimately, however, the war’s demands consumed all their time and energy. The war also brought an end to The Tanganyika Big Game and Tourist Organisation.

In Rasharasha: To Africa for a Rose, the story of game conservation efforts continues after the war with the establishment of National Parks in East Africa and the appearance of conservationists like Mervyn Cowie (as depicted in the film, Where No Vultures Fly), Bernhard Grzimek and son Michael, with their book and film, Serengeti Shall Not Die, and their conservation photographic image agency, Okapia, founded by Bernhard in 1954. In addition, elephant expert Iain Douglas-Hamilton came to Rasharasha in 1969.

The post-war period also saw the emergence of famous wildlife photographers working in East Africa with access to far more sophisticated equipment, some of whom the family met, such as Peter Mathiessen, Hugo von Lawick (ex-husband of Jane Goodall) and Peter Beard.

The efforts to preserve wild animal species never prove straightforward, however. The concept and creation of game reserves and National Parks exacerbated the ever-existent poaching problem and engendered a polemic concerning the banning of humans from living in the game reserves. Both remain ongoing battles in East Africa.

* Hemingway wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Green Hills of Africa and others after this trip.

** Ulyate family personal communications https://ntz.info/gen/b00723.html#id04744

References and sources:

Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton by Sara Wheeler, Random House, London, 2006

White Hunters:The Golden Age of African Safaris by Brian Herne, 2001

The Modern Salonnière by Saxon Henry and blog post https://saxonhenry.com/the-camera-becomes-king-on-safari/

Ngorongoro: The Eighth Wonder by Henry Fosbrooke, Andre Deutsch Limited, 1972

Edward VIII: The Lion King documentary https://youtu.be/IYwyEnbyvzY?si=u6Al-lK_K4DH_xKS

www.europeansineastafrica.co.uk

https://ntz.info/index.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian_Institution

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