IDNO

P.99961.VH

Description

F.H. Dufty studio photograph of a Fijian man flanked by two younger men, one of whom is armed with an early breechloading (?Snider) conversion from a muzzle-loading rifle, the other with a long gadi club. The man is dressed in a dark barkcloth isulu wrapper with waist sash, and wears a beaded necklet. The younger men are both dressed as Christian fighting chiefs, with fringed white barkcloth iwabale shoulder sashes, looped up maloyara trains, and with striped, dyed and pleated pandanus leaf overskirts over their malo loincloths, which the man at right wears girded high up under his ribs in the provocative malowala manner. The man on the left has a white bulidina cowry on a black band at his throat as a symbol of rank and authority, the other an itaubebatinivuaka or boar tusk pendant of the type fashionable in the 1870s, when they were imported from the New Hebrides (currently Vanuatu) by the labour traders. Note the photographer’s clamps.
Circa 1875-1876. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003]

Physical Condition: Print mounted onto card.

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Levuka

Cultural Affliation

Named Person

Photographer

Dufty, Francis Herbert (Dufty Brothers, Levuka)

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

circa 1875 - 1876

Collection Name

von Hügel Collection

Source

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Format

Print Black & White Mounted

Primary Documentation

Other Information

P.99726.VH to P.100050.VH were in the belted folder now numbered C539/3/. This was formerly kept in paper archive Large Box G; VH1/4/5. It has now been transferred to the photo archive. The lists describing the contents of this box have been returned to the Paper Archive.

Photographer: This print is recognisable as Dufty’s Levuka studio through the painted studio backdrop to represent a view out a window with shutters (note the knob added to the shutter that casts a shadow). This appears to be a feature of Dufty’s studio throughout the 1870s, although the idealised landscape ‘view’ changes around 1875-1876. The Photographer, Date, and Place fields have been amended accordingly. [JD 16/3/2012]

Related Image: This print or negative appears to be a unique image within the MAA Photograph Collections. [JD 26/1/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Fund. [A. Nadin, 13/10/2003]