Snapshots of Hawai'i more than keepsakes

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writer

Few locations anywhere have been more photographed since the beginning of the 20th century than Hawai'i. But the image of these remote Islands that has been presented to the world has been largely romanticized and manufactured by marketers who — through the use of the camera — treated the Hawaiian culture and native residents as exotic and enticing commodities.

"Photography in Hawai'i" is examined in the autumn edition of the international scholarly journal History of Photography.

The focal point of the Autumn issue is "Photography in Hawai'i." The Islands have been much captured on film, but how those photos have affected residents here and their relationship with people elsewhere is a topic not often explored.

"We've all known the Jerome Baker and Kodak Hula Show images," said Lynn Ann Davis, head of the Preservation Department of the University of Hawai'i's Hamilton Library and guest editor for the Autumn issue.

By and large, Davis said, the historical photographic account of Hawai'i has been presented from "a narrow, nostalgic, illustrative perspective."

"I think it's important to begin to do an analysis of these images. What are they about? How do they affect us? What do they tell us about ourselves? What can we learn from them?"

	History of Photography discussion group
•	Led by Lynn Ann Davis, guest editor and photo historian, including discussion of the work of photographer Alonzo Gartley and contemporary artists Anne Kapulani Landgraf and Kimo Cashman
•	7 p.m. tomorrow, Mission Houses Museum
•	Free
•	Also: A limited number of the journals will be available at the Museum Shop and at Native Books for $45 each through October

To begin the dialogue, Davis brought together scholars, some of whom had never written about photography, to speak from their individual fields of expertise.

For example, Lew Andrews, UH associate professor of art history, discusses the photography of Alonzo Gartley — a name nearly forgotten even though a UH building has been named after him — who was a late-19th and early-20th-century businessman and landscape photographer.

Gartley, whose photos were among the first used by the early tourist industry, leaves a complex, photographically appealing legacy, according to Andrews.

"If, over the long run, Gartley's pictures led in unintended or dubious directions, they nevertheless provide an invaluable record of the early 20th century in Hawai'i, an enduring document of buildings and scenes, many of which no longer exist," writes Andrews.

Around the same time Gartley was chronicling scenic panoramas, a new element was making itself apparent in the process of "appropriating the native Hawaiian culture," Davis said.

"After 1890, you have the half-tone process becoming available," she says. "Photographs are being introduced into newspapers, magazines and brochures for the first time. All of a sudden you have photographs that can be used in a different way — the development of photographs for a tourist economy in Hawai'i."

The Spanish-American War of 1898 brought an influx of soldiers to Hawai'i, and with them a drive to expand the romantic myth to include individuals — particularly attractive young women.

An example of this transition is seen in the magazine's cover photo, a J.J. Williams photo from 1900, depicting a mysterious, lovely, nameless Hawaiian woman. Previous photos of people had focused on island families involved in agricultural pursuits or static portraits of Hawai'i's royalty or hula dancers.

By analyzing Hawai'i's photographic consequence, people everywhere can better understand what this place was and was not, as well as what it is and is not, said Davis. The purpose of the autumn issue is to keep the conversation alive.

"Sure, the issue is scholarly," said Davis. "But it's very readable. It is totally approachable and engaging."