Camera Trails in Africa: A Photographer's Safari in British East Africa
About this ebook
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.
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.
