Ethnographic Pictorialism: Caroline Gurrey's Hawaiian Types at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition

摘要

In 1909, a series of photographs by Honolulu portraitist Caroline Gurrey was exhibited at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE) in Seattle. The photographs, which combine elements of the Pictorialist style and ethnographic photography, are portraits of young men and women of either Native Hawaiian or mixed-race heritage. The archival record indicates that the photographs were purchased in Honolulu by a member of the Exposition's administration, and Gurrey's original intention for them is currently unknown. Nevertheless, the author argues that through their display at the AYPE - an exposition that stressed industry, expansion and commerce as its key themes - Gurrey's portraits served a significant role in the articulation and visualisation of the Exposition's central goals and the United States's desires for settlement of the newly-acquired Territory of Hawaii by bourgeois white agriculturalists.