Points of Focus: Historic Photographs from the Pacific

Drawing on its important holdings of photographs, the University of Sydney Macleay Museum is presenting an exhibition of Pacific photographs until November 1. The selected works date from about 1850 to 1950 and derive from a variety of sources: colonial administrators, missionaries, traders, anthropologists, and, in some cases, even tourists. Together they form a striking illustration of life and traditions among the peoples of the Pacific in the past. perhaps even more importantly, the images trace the history and development of the medium of photography from the nineteenth century to the present as a means of recording and disseminating ideas.

View the exhibition's official website.

Frank Hurley, Sunset Across Goodenough Bay  -  Papua New Guinea, 1920-1921

I. Hogbin, Marigum, Headman of Dap Village  -  Papua New Guinea, 1934

W.J. Jackson, Sea Village Admiralty Islands New Guinea, 1929

Images courtesy of Macleay Museum, University of Sydney

From Samoa with Love

On view until October 5 at Munich's Museum für Völkerkunde is From Samoa with Love, an exhibition examining the origins and content of colonial-era imagery of Samoa in a way that has never been produced before, shedding light on the little-known history of the cultural exchanges that took place between Germany and its former Polynesian colony during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Using period photographs as well as objects from the museum's own collection, the installation's curators also enlisted the aid of Samoan nationals to help shed light on this unique period in history.

View the exhibition's official website.

Imagery courtesy of the Museum für Völkerkunde

A Glimpse of Paradise

The Museum für Völkerkunde is currently showing Blick ins Paradies—Südsee Erleben in Historischen Fotografien (A Glimpse of Paradise: Experiencing the South Seas through Historical Photographs). The exhibition, which will be on view until December 31, 2014, consists of photographs of Polynesia from colonial times selected from the museum’s archives, as well as from private collections such as those of Eduard Arning and the Godeffroy family.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Images courtesy of the Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg

Africa Re-Viewed: The Photographic Legacy of Eliot Elisofon

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at the National Museum of African Art, the museum is organizing a retrospective exhibition of internationally-renowned photographer Eliot Elisofon. The exhibition focus on Elisofon's innovative photography and its impact on portraying the diverse arts and cultures of modern-era Africa. The exhibition will be the first to pair his photographs with collected objects, films, books, and journals, and the first exhibition in forty years to celebrate his photographic legacy.

Visit the Smithsonian website.

Images courtesy of the National Museum of African Art

African Beauty - Photographs by John Kenny

An exhibition of stunning monochrome and colour portraits, on view now at The Africa Centre in London, reveals the vibrant jewellery, delicate body art, beautiful fabrics and intricate hairstyles that decorate traditional peoples from across Africa.
African Beauty illustrates the remarkable ways that people in traditional communities engage with material culture to express their identity. From the fringes of the Sahara to the Great Rift Valley, and south to the arid communities of Angola and Namibia, Kenny’s photographs are an important journey into social status, creativity and sense of identity that lies behind the powerful and unique aesthetic of traditional village life.

Visit The Africa Centre's official website.

Information and images courtesy of The African Centre

Sahara at the Museo delle Culture

In its final weeks at the Museo delle Culture in Lugano, Switzerland is an entrancing exhibition dedicated to the Swiss photographer Peter W. Häberlin (1912 - 1953) and is the seventh project of the “Esovisioni” exhibition cycle. This cycle is a long-term project of the Museo delle Culture with the objective to define a sort of “map” describing how the West has viewed (and judged) the Other. 

During their research, the museum staff unearthed the traces of Häberlin’s life through the diaries and accounts of his friends, travelling companions and remaining relatives. After two years of intense collaboration with the Swiss Foundation of Photography in Winterthur, the exhibition presents a rich selection of first prints, which were developed from the negatives conserved at the aforementioned Foundation.

Häberlin made his trans-Saharan reportage between 1949 and 1952: a vast series of photographs from four journeys, through which he followed the ancient caravan routes from Algiers, crossing the Saharan desert until he reached the North of Cameroon. Shortly after returning from his last trip, Häberlin died in a tragic accident in 1953, in the midst of his preparations for a new voyage to Mexico. 

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Museo delle Culture, Lugano

Ainu - Antenati spriti e orsi

As part of the celebrations for the centenary of Fosco Maraini’s birth, the Museo delle Culture in Lugano and the Museo Nazionale della Montagna in Turin have organized a temporary exhibition about the Ainu people. The exhibition displays sixty-two photographs taken by Fosco Maraini among the Ainu on Hokkaido island between 1938 and 1940, as well as in 1954, 1963 and 1971. There is also a series of objects belonging to the Ainu material culture.

Visit the exhibition's official website.

Information and images courtesy of the Muzeo Nazionale della Montagna