Neils Walwin Holm

Neils Walwin Holm (1866–1927?) was a West African photographer who later retrained as a barrister. He has been called "the pre-eminent photographer of Lagos, West Africa, from the 1890s until 1910".

Biography

Holm was born in the Gold Coast.

There, he built a successful photographic business, gaining early commissions from the colonial administration. He is said to have been the first photographer in Lagos Colony to introduce the dry plate, using plates manufactured in Ilford in England. He married in 1890, though his wife died in 1892.

In July 1893, Holm travelled to Britain for the first time, visiting a Pall Mall exhibition by the Photographic Society of Great Britain. On his return to Lagos, he advertised himself as a West African representative of UK manufacturers. He kept up transatlantic connections using a telegraphic cable address and advertisements in the British magazine Practical Photographer. In 1895, he was elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society, and in 1896 became a Fellow.

In 1900, he returned to London to attend the First Pan-African Conference, with another visit to London in 1903. In 1910, he gave up photography, and from 1910 to 1917 trained at the Middle Temple as a barrister for the Lagos courts.