Ox Wagon

Scene in a bustling South African market town before the Boer War

These scenes of locals and livestock in a South African market town are attributed to amateur cameraman Robert Mitchell, who travelled in South Africa before the outbreak of the war, making films in locations such as Durban and Cape Town. Where this film was taken, and what Mitchell found picturesque in the scene remains a mystery. As elsewhere in Mitchell's photography, the rawness of the footage is one of its chief virtues: the local scene unfolds unselfconsciously, perhaps in the aftermath of trading at MW Walker's auctioneers.