After returning to East Africa in his late 20s, Charles Trotter achieved considerable success as a photographer between 1951 and 1962, launching his career with pictures of the voyage out on the maiden voyage of the SS Kenya. Based in Nairobi, his work covered a huge variety of subjects for which he received commissions, such as weddings, family portraits and society occasions (chiefly among the British community), commercial commissions showing industries of the time, and public occasions such as sporting and cultural events and royal visits. There are also a huge number of images which represent his own interests, including African landscapes and wildlife and local people. The majority of the images are taken in Kenya, although other East African countries including Zanzibar, Tanganyika (Tanzania) and Uganda are also represented. His reputation is demonstrated by his presence behind the scenes at royal visits and on the sets of Hollywood films. The particular research value of the collection lies in the fact that many of the pictures capture the end of Kenya as a colony, and the new roads, civic buildings and factories photographed by Trotter suggest the pride which accompanied independence.
Areas of particular focus and interest include:
- motorsport, with images from the East African Safari Rally for which Trotter was the official photographer
- other sporting events, including horse shows, athletics meets and the Kenyan Team at the Melbourne (1956) and Rome (1960) Olympics
- the 1950s expansion of Nairobi, with its large number of new buildings constructed in an attempt to represent a departure from its colonial origins
- aerial photography of the Kenyan landscape
- film stills and film stars visiting Kenya on location, including Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra and Clark Gable
- royal visits, including Princess Elizabeth on the visit where she became Queen in 1952 and the Queen Mother in 1959
- scenes connected to the Mau Mau emergency
The material in this collection includes the complete set of over 50,000 negatives from Trotter's career, together with complete indexes to the images. There are also over 2000 loose prints, 3 albums and c. 150 enlargements taken from the negative collection, as well as c. 330 slides and a film for which Trotter was cameraman.
