Working Session: Photographing Pacific Islanders
Organizers: Kathryn Creely and Eric K. Silverman

After meeting in 2010 and 2011 as an informal session, we came together for a working session in 2012.  Eleven papers (ten pre-circulated) were briefly summarized and then discussed, first by an assigned discussant and then by the group as a whole.  Along with our 13 participants, there were also about 20 attendees in the audience, many of whom participated in the rich discussion.  In 2013 we will meet for a symposium, with invited outside discussants.  Final papers are due by November 1, 2012.  Our goal is to move forward to a publication that can include numerous black-and-white and also color photographs, perhaps with ANU EPress.

Themes that emerged in this session include: 

• sharing/repatriation of photographs with local communities and wider audiences through sharing prints and digitizing/internet access;
  
• valuations/uses/interpretations of photographs in Pacific Islander communities;
  
• old and new practices of  Pacific Islander photographers (personal,  professional, artistic), including social media;
  
• re/interpretation/description of  colonial photographs (gaze, emotion, empathy,  indigenous agency, eliding modernity, racism/exoticism, imperialism, framing for publication);
  
• representing movement, temporality, place, social contexts

Kathryn Creely, Melanesian Archive, Geisel Library 0175-R, 9500 Gilman Drive, University of California San Diego, La Jolla CA 92093-0175, USA; tel. 858-534-2029; kcreely@ucsd.edu

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