Album containing 170 photographs of an unnamed British army officer and his family, compiled while on service in Africa, India and elsewhere.

170 photographs, on forty-one pages of a fifty-page album with leaf dimensions of 26 x 35.5 cm. The album is half-bound, with black leather corners and spine, and green faux-leather boards, aged and with loose leaves and worn binding. The photographs are often slightly faded, but are for the most part in good condition. Each page is entirely filled, the photographs ranging in size from 22 x 26 cm to 3 x 2 cm. The album is a mixture of commercial and personal, with around three-quarters of the photographs depicting scenes from the officer's time of service, with roughly the last quarter consisting of family photographs taken after his retirement. The album contains a number of photographs of women, often with children and servants, including a striking full-page posed outdoor portrait of a group largely made up of officers' wives and children in their Sunday best. Of particular interest are fourteen portraits of women and girls from the Indian subcontinent in native dress (one with a violin). There are several photographs of soldiers with musical instruments, including an impressive full-page posed portrait of a fifty-four piece regimental band, and another full-page photograph of a band playing at an extensive colonial parade ground. There are also a number of colonial railway scenes, one titled 'COONOOR' and another 'Back to Africa'. Other group photographs include a full-page portrait of thirty-three officers posing in full dress in front of a colonial portico, another portrait of an eighty-man company, and another of an English colonial cricket team. Also a photograph of a group of native soldiers (Gurkhas?) with prisoners (one manacled), another of two Indian men in turbans cutting hair, and another of a trench packed with dead soldiers, titled 'Spions Kop, Natal. Jan 26th. 1900'. Several parade ground scenes; officers and their families with servants; the regimental goat; imposing colonial barracks; a war memorial and a monument; a fakir and a 'wolf-man'. Two photographs show the same three friends, first posing in uniform in a studio portrait and second mounted on stationary bicycles. The officer appears to have ended his service in Bermuda, and the album includes ten family photographs of 'Life in Bermuda'. Several of the post-retirement photographs are captioned ('The Allan. Dunblane. 1911.', 'Stirling' and 'Home Moray'). Seven are of a mixed group during a boating trip 'On the Canab, Aldershot, 1908-9'; six are of a similar group 'In the Glen, 1912' and 'By the Allan, 1913'. And two taken in Shoebury, in 1907 and 1910. Two cuttings laid down at the end of the album may give a clue to the provenance. The first, headed 'Presentations at Prospect', records an award by Sir James Willcocks (Governor of Bermuda, 1917 to 1922) to 'Army Schoolmaster Cameron, who is stationed at Prospect, and also [...] an Officer, two Non Commissioned Officers, and two Privates of the 2/4th Battalion the East York Regiment, for bravery in saving life at Warwick'. The album may well have been compiled by Cameron's family (one picture shows a man in tartan dress), but the cutting is accompanied by four photographs, captioned 'The 'ero', 'The Ceremony', 'Before' and 'After', the first of which may suggest the officer involved in the Warwick incident. A final newspaper cutting shows the cast of a performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, none of whom bear the name Cameron.