Odds and Quads

Khartoum’s Coliseum cinema is seen here (top centre) in 1935, the year it opened. It was an open-air facility with a facade and walled, roofless seating.

A 1949 photo (top left) captures an unnamed railway station located between Abu Hamed and Wadi Halfa, on the line cutting across the Nubian desert near the great bend of the Nile.

A tea break in the desert in 1931 (top right) documents a typically British desire to keep up appearances, down to the potted plant on the table.

The photos come from Durham University’s Sudan Archive, and are on display at the university’s Oriental Museum until 30 April as part of the Disappearing Heritage of Sudan, 1820-1956: Photographic and Filmic Exploration in Sudan exhibition, alongside photographs by Frederique Cifuentes from 2004-10. These record remnants of Ottoman, Egyptian and British colonial periods, such as the abandoned railway tracks and building here, and how they have been appropriated since independence.

The exhibition will also be shown at the University of Khartoum in Sudan from September to December this year.

Send suggestions for this series on the treasures, oddities and curiosities owned by universities across the world to matthew.reisz @tsleducation.com.