IDNO

P.87321.VH

Description

Strip cut from a larger photograph and featuring an untamed “Kai Colo” man from the highlands of Vitilevu, wearing a white barkcloth malo loincloth and a batinivuaka boar tusk pendant with beaded strings. His lime-bleached sandy-coloured hair - perhaps a human hair wig or ulumate (literally “dead head”) in this instance - is arranged in one of the flamboyant, pricked out hairstyles of pre-Christian Fiji.
Circa 1869-1871. [Fergus Clunie, 26/9/2003]

Physical Condition: Trimmed portrait of a Kai Colo ‘mountaineer’.

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Vitilevu; Namosi; Levuka

Cultural Affliation

Kai Colo [historically Big Head Mountaineers]

Named Person

Photographer

Dufty Brothers, Levuka (Dufty, Francis Herbert)

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

circa 1869 - 1871

Collection Name

Von Hugel Collection

Source

Format

Print Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.87321.VH to P.87342.VH were in the envelope now numbered C512/4/. This envelope came from the Museum’s paper archive envelope VH1/4/7, which has now been re-numbered C512/.

Photographer: This print was provisionally attributed to “?Dufty Brothers, Levuka”, but the uncropped and unmanipulated duplicate print, P.99864.VH, has been attributed to Dufty’s Levuka studio through recognition of the backdrop of foliage, including banana leaves, to the right and the pineapple? plant to the left. The same chair and fan also appear in a number of Dufty’s photographs. This configuration of studio props appears to be used by Dufty between circa 1870 - 1875. [JD 12/3/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Program One. [A. Nadin, 2/7/2003]