Researching early photography of the Pacific Islands: An overview

Abstract

Historical research on the early years of photography in the Pacific Islands has revealed changes in the practice of photography, the development of Pacific imagery, tropes and stereotypes and changes in the ways images were distributed, archived and used in modern contexts. Research in the field was initially focused on photography’s indexical nature and the role of professional and amateur photographers, travellers, colonial officials and missionaries. The research highlighted here, only in the English language and excluding Aotearoa/New Zealand, reveals how later analyses have begun to grow more theoretical, in keeping with postcolonial approaches to reading cross-cultural representation, and how new directions in research point towards the nature of Indigenous engagement with early photography.