IDNO

P.99980.VH

Description

On Catalogue Card for duplicate print P.4117.ACH1: “Three men with clubs.” [typed text]

Two slightly different photographs of the same three Kai Colo highlanders of the “Nuya Malo [Noiemalu] tribe, Wai ni Mala, Viti Levu”. See P.4117.ACH1 for detail. The cleft or wedge cut into the hair of the man at centre is deliberate.
Levuka, early 1870s. [Fergus Clunie, 26/7/2003, from record P.87319.VH, JD 5/11/2011]

Studio portrait of three Kai Colo or Vitilevu highlanders of the Noiemalu (Wainimala) with traditional hairstyles but wearing their malo loincloths as more modest isulu wrap-around kilts, perhaps in response to the Christianised climate of Levuka. The man at centre wears a white shell necklace. The bearded man at right has the long hair below his ears plaited into long tobe plaits. The youth at right holds a saulaki rootstock club (behind which you can see the foot of a photographer’s clamp), the man at centre holds an iirimasei chief’s fan made from a niumasei (Pritchardia pacifica) palm leaf, the man at left holds a Tongan club which, like the fan, is probably a studio prop.
Circa 1873-1874. See P.4117.ACH1, P.87319.VH, P.87230.VH and P.99983.VH. [Fergus Clunie, 14/7/2003, from record P.4117.ACH1, JD 5/11/2011]

Physical Condition: Print mounted onto card.

Place

Oceania Polynesia; Fiji; Ovalau Island; Levuka; Viti Levu

Cultural Affliation

Kai Colo

Named Person

Photographer

Dufty Brothers, Levuka

Collector / Expedition

von Hügel, Anatole (Baron)

Date

circa 1873 - 1874

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 image was provisionally attributed to “Dufty Brothers, Levuka”, but Dufty’s Levuka studio is recognisable 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 thorughout the 1870s, although the landscape ‘view’ changes around 1875-1876. The brocade curtain patterned with a floral design framed by a diamond-shaped outline is also distinct to Dufty’s Levuka studio. The Photographer, Date, and Place fields have been amended accordingly. [JD 13/3/2012]

This print has been catalogued with the support of the Getty Grant Fund. [Alex Nadin, 12/02/2003]