PostcardS From Oceania: portraits and the picturesque during the colonial era by Max Quanchi and Max Shekleton. Suva: University of the South Pacific Press. 2015.
The book illustrates 221 of the approximately 100,000 distinct picture postcards produced during what the authors call the ‘postcard boom’ between the 1890s and 1930 (p.38).
The examples illustrated are drawn from Max Shekleton’s collection of about 60,000 picture postcards with Oceanic subjects. Although the collection includes many duplicates, mailed at different times by different people, it consists of a significant proportion of those issued.
After two introductory chapters the cards illustrated and discussed are divided according to six themes: The picturesque; portraits: nymphs, types, and stereotypes; grass huts, cases, bure and village life, including a case study-Hanuabada; Kastom; culture and traditions; living in town; and the colonial presence, including another case study — The French in New Caledonia.
As the back of the book’s cover notes, it is about the colonial era and also about how audiences defined the Pacific amid the postcard deluge of belles, bananas, post towns, pirogues, and plantations.
The authors note that captions on the postcards cannot always be trusted. For example, the card of the famous Ha’amonga of Tonga, shown on p.96 in the book, is captioned “Gateway to a holy city” although its function ‘remains a mystery’ (cf. Keith St Cartmail’s The Art of Tonga, 1997: 35-6). Postcards also provided a distorted picture of Pacific cultures.
Very few illustrate games, suggesting that ‘natives’ had little time for leisure or interest in entertainment (p.106).
However, early postcards of Oceania can also be valuable and rare records of information not otherwise available. For example, a postcard reproduced in this society’s book Shields of Melanesia, edited by Harry Beran and Barry Craig (2005-189), illustrates a war shield of Central Province, PNG, apparently unknown in collections. And a postcard in my collection shows Numakala, the “Paramount of Chief” of Kiriwina, Trobriand Islands, PNG, who died in 1899. Only one other image of him is known to me.
The book is a significant addition to the published early photographic record of the Pacific, which includes a few books on picture postcards cited by the authors (p.49) and the following books of photographs: Frank Hurley in Papua: Photographs of the 1920-1923 Expedition by Jim Specht and J. Fields (1984), Malinowski’s Kiriwina: Fieldwork Photography 1915-1918 by Michael Young (1998), An Anthropologist in Papua: The Photography of F.E. Williams 1922-39 by Michael Young and Julia Clark (2001), and Bernatzik: South Pacific by Kevin Concru (2002).
It further reveals many insights on Pacific, peoples and cultures, colonial rule, economic development and travel that support but sometimes challenges histories based solely on documents, print and text.
Postcards from Oceania has been published by the USP Press and launched during the Pacific Arts Association Conference held in Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga and are available for sale at the University of the South Pacific Book Centre, email maharaj_v@usp.ac.fj, website www.uspbookcentre.com, for $A55 plus postage or $F85.
