Informal Session: Photographing Pacific Islanders
Organizers: Eric Silverman and Kathy Creely

The session, co-organized by Kathryn Creely and Eric Silverman, took place as scheduled on Saturday, February 13, from 2-5 p.m. In addition to the organizers, five other participants attended, as did about 12 others at the periphery who often contributed to our discussions. We precirculated no papers or abstracts but a list of relevant books and articles.
Eric Silverman spoke about Margaret Mead’s and Gregory Bateson’s 1938 Sepik River photos. Kathy Creely touched on institutionally-based digitization and virtual repatriation projects at the Melanesian Archive, focusing on Roger Keesing, Harold Scheffler, and early 20th century images taken by physician Sylvester Lambert. Jocelyn Armstrong surveyed her own photographs taken in 1970s documenting Maori leaders and communities on the South Island of New Zealand. Larry Lake talked about the images from the 1930s taken during the scientific expedition to New Guinea by Richard Archbold. Lisa Lawson Burke spoke on photographs depicting dance/dancers in Kiribati, contrasting commercially-produced works with those taken by local residents. Pamela Rosi gave a presentation on challenges to stereotypical images of Pacific women, expressed in the work of contemporary Pacific artists, Shigeyuki Kihara and Rosanna Raymond. Jamon Halvaksz gave brief remarks on his work regarding representations of relationship and place in photographs taken by Biangai people in Morobe, PNG. Three other participants—Francois Deschamps, Alan Howard, and Nancy Lutkehaus—were unable to attend.

The session concluded by discerning three common topics and themes. First, many papers will focus on the contexts, purposes, and visual tropes of photographs of Pacific Islanders taken by anthropologists and other outsiders. Second, several papers will discuss how Pacific Islanders today use and see these older collections of outsider photos. Third, several participants mentioned the concept of agency in photographs taken by Pacific Islanders. We agree to move forward to a Working Session in 2011. If you would like to participate in the Working Session, please contact Eric and Kathy.

Eric Silverman, Department of American Studies, Wheelock College, 200 The Riverway, Boston MA 02215, USA; <esilverman@wheelock.edu>

Kathy Creely, Melanesian Archive, Geisel Library 0175-R, 9500 Gilman Drive, University of California San Diego, La Jolla CA 92093-0175, USA; <kcreely@ucsd.edu>