Alphonso Lisk-Carew

• Souvenir album of Freetown by royal warrant to His Royal Highness The Duke of Connaught. Freetown, Sierra Leone. [n.d.] (Consisting of one folded leaf with illustrations; 11 x 16 cm) • Postcards of Sierra Leone. Freetown, Sierra Leone. [19--?] (13 postcards: black and white; 9 x 14 cm)

The Library of Congress catalogue lists 50 visual items by the Lisk-Carews in their African Postcard Collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the group portrait of three young women titled "Bundoo Girls, Sierra Leone". This image was shown as one of 80 images in the museum's 2015 exhibition and catalogue titled In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa. Further, the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University Libraries in Evanston, Illinois, holds a copy of The Red Book of West Africa, the Souvenir album of Freetown, as well as several photographs and postcards by the Lisk-Carew Brothers. The Ross Archive of African Images at Yale University Library also holds photographs by Lisk-Carew. In the Netherlands, the African Studies Centre Leiden owns photographs by Lisk-Carew. Two of his historical photographs from the Christraud M. Geary Collection at the Rietberg Museum, Zurich, were included in their 2022 exhibition The Future is Blinking. Early Studio Photography from West and Central Africa.

Vera Viditz-Ward published 13 of Lisk-Carew's photographs in a 2011 article, with some of these from the Sierra Leone Museum collection and others from private collectors. Commenting on the history of photography in Freetown, Viditz-Ward saw Lisk-Carew's work as a transition between photographers of the 19th and 20th centuries. She further stated that the early period of photography in Freetown from 1850 until 1918 "formed the basis of a truly African photography [...] and still exists as a living tradition in modern Sierra Leone." • Illustration — "Bundoo Girls, Sierra Leone", c. 1911. In 2014, Julie Crooks, who later became head of the department of Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora at the Art Gallery of Ontario, published her PhD thesis about Lisk-Carew and early photography in Sierra Leone. In her article accompanying the 2015 exhibition In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Crooks wrote about Lisk-Carew's visual records of the many changes in Sierra Leone, covering about 50 years of his work. Specifically, she called him "one amongst many early Sierra Leonean photographers who had a hand in shaping the country's history." Focusing on a vintage reproduction of a group portrait with the historical caption "Bundoo Girls, Sierra Leone" and published by the Lisk-Carew Brothers around 1911, Crooks gave a detailed description of the three young women in the picture and the Bundu secret society they belonged to. In this studio portrait, the sitters were placed before a painted background in the style of the Victorian era. It shows various styles of Bundu clothing and accessories worn in the women's specific region of origin. Rather than mentioning ethnographic information that the Bundoo cultural society practiced female genital mutilation, Crooks wrote that "Lisk-Carew recognized the value of producing portraits in which the young women negotiated their authorship." A different, ethnographic photograph attributed to Lisk-Carew, originally titled "Bundu Girls and Devils", shows a group of young Bundu women of the Mende ethnic group after their initiation. Wearing similar accessories as seen in the studio portrait, they were photographed in an outdoor setting, accompanied by a traditional musician and a masked dancer. • Illustration — Documentary photograph of an initiation ceremony for girls of the Mende ethnic group In her 2018 book Postcards from Africa: Photographers of the Colonial Era, Christraud M. Geary described the work of the Lisk-Carew brothers. The book includes a 1938 photograph showing Lisk-Carew standing before his studio and a portrait of an unidentified "Native Chief" in fancy clothes, taken about 1908. Referring to Lisk-Carew's visual legacy, Geary noted his "mastery of European conventions" in his portraits as well as his "modern documentary practices."