The of a tiny damaged print of David Chudy from the early days in Northern Rhodesia, which I scanned and recovered set up a new train of thought.. The first was the total incongruity of this image to anyone who knew him -in the sense that David Chudy never showed the slightest interest in hunting of any kind – not least big game hunting. He lived in Africa and could have expressed this at any time.
As a newly arrived young man in the wilds of Northern Rhodesia, near Congo he photographed what was around him and notable are a couple of gory negatives of the aftermath of a big game hunt. He did not pose in these but there is evidence that he sent photos of this back to his brother Max in Poland before the war broke out and the end of all communications. It seems as if he was intent on showing off and trying to impress Max with his adventures in ‘darkest Africa’ rather than document an interest in hunting. Max thanks him for photos of the hippos in a 1938 letter and asks him to ‘send an monkey to him in Poland’ .
The hippo hunt photos which follow feature unknown hunter individuals – who, it seems would forever remain unidentified.
Meanwhile, newly arrived on the Copperbelt in Northern Rhodesia, Ellen Rothschild – who would become Ellen Chudy, his wife – wrote, circa 1939 .:
“Chudy (not Mister) was about 23 years old, was a Polish Jew and worked on the mine. He was the ‘resident’ plumber. I later found out that he learnt the trade, helping his equally untrained brother Martin, in Johannesburg for about 2 months. He then went to Northern Rhodesia (I’ll come to that in good time) and got a job with a builder with the name of Smith, a red faced individual with a very pretty wife and a private plane (he had a child who when he grew up worked in the Income Tax department in Salisbury Southern Rhodesia and incidentally caught Aaron – David’s elder brother for a few hundred pounds after he applied for a tax rebate and who soon after that left the Tax Department to become, if not a good, but a very popular writer named Wilbur Smith’.
‘Smith’ refers to Herbert James Smith. and Wilbur Smith the best selling adventure author needs no introduction.
There appear to be few photos of Smith senior on the internet – so it is hard to speculate with confidence: whether he is featured in David’s photos. It would be very interesting if he was. What do you think?
The following shows the man and his son Wilbur (source https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5666715/My-father-saved-life-killing-three-lions-hungry-flesh.html)
Following are some of David’s images and it is up to the viewer to guess if the person in the photo is James Herbert Smith. Smith would have been somewhat younger than he is in the gory lion photo.
