Galleries of Maoriland by Roger Blackley

Author:Roger Blackley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Art History, Maori
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2018-12-22T16:00:00+00:00

Enos Silvanus Pegler, Tawhiao The Maori King’s Tangi: Maori Forces’ Drill, 24 September 1894, gelatin silver photograph, 149 × 196 mm. ALEXANDER TURNBULL LIBRARY, PACOLL-1893-05

A peculiar scene was enacted in the Ethnological annexe of the Auckland Museum on November 3. Amongst the visitors were two Maori women, one of them Tanira, a widow of King Tawhiao. When they saw the portrait of Tawhiao, which was presented to the Museum by Mr George Graham, they commenced to tangi, or cry, in front of it. The unwonted noise brought together all the visitors in the Museum, and soon the passers-by in the street began to pour in. The two women, however, continued their wailing till they had satisfied their feelings and the requirements of Maori etiquette, and then Tanira suspended upon the framework on which the picture stands a small native shoulder mat. The mourners then took their leave.25

Remarkably, that ‘small native shoulder mat’ is still decorating Tāwhiao’s portrait in the photograph of the Maori Hall made several years later by the Auckland photographer Thomas Pringle.

Māori held a wide spectrum of attitudes towards portraiture, ranging from wholehearted acceptance – associated with a realisation that one could thereby exert some degree of control over one’s image – through to outright abhorrence and rejection. That many communities attempted to regulate intrusive surveillance is clear from newspaper reports of difficulties experienced by photographers who lacked appropriate permission.26 Many Māori were concerned about the precise issue raised by Te Whiti and many others, namely the com-modification of one’s image and the unknown uses to which such an image might be put. The reality was that association with the culture of photography amounted to a Faustian pact, whereby to obtain one’s own photograph was simultaneously to place it into circulation. Even when a contract had been struck that a photograph not be circulated, the agreement could be flouted with impunity. This was the case when a posthumous photograph of a young rangatira – made by request of the boy’s father at a tangi near Urenui in 1900 – appeared later that year in a two-page spread of the widely distributed Christmas number of the Auckland Weekly News.27 Taite Hoerā, also known as Wherokino, mounted a case against G. H. White, the photographer, at the New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court, where he claimed £50 for breach of contract, with an alternative claim of £50 for breach of confidence in publishing the tapu photograph.28 It transpired that J. D. Wickham, an agent for the Auckland Weekly News, had paid for the photographer’s work and hence legally owned it. Judgment went against the plaintiff, with costs.29

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