Scraped up from the beds. Uprooted. Carefully picked and collected. Transported by boat. Beaten. Sun-dried. Clipped and polished. Sold to the highest bidder. The sponge industry of the colonial Bahamas as represented in Jacob F. Coonley’s ‘The Sponge Yard’, an albumen print circa 1870, shows neat rows of sponges laid out to dry, to be clipped, to have the animal remains eroded away by hours in the sun
‘Sponge Yard’ (c. 1870): The Colonial Photography of Jacob Coonley
