Captivating Photos
About a decade ago I first came across a photograph of a group of unidentified Māori musicians in a copy of the Turnbull Library Record. According to the Alexander Turnbull Library catalogue entry for it, even the photographer is unknown.
It is a captivating and intriguing photo – a group of unknown (but very hip and in some respects quite contemporary-looking) Māori men, standing in an unknown location being photographed by a person unknown on an unknown date or even decade.
In 2021 I shared the photo on social media and asked if anyone knew who the men were. Surely they must have descendants today who would be able to identify the group.
While others were just as intrigued as me by the photo, none had any solid leads. Jazz historian Dr Aleisha Ward noted that her, Chris Bourke and others had been attempting to identify the men for more than a decade without success.
The original catalogue entry was no more helpful. They were simply an unidentified group of musicians. But a later updated note at least seems to pin down the era a little more. It states that:
The inclusion of a cornet in this band may indicate that the print dates from the 1920s as later bands usually preferred trumpets. However it could also be a rural band from the 1930s.
At this point I’m under no illusion that we are going to get any closer to an answer as to who the men were. And maybe part of the power of the photo is the mystery behind it. It is the kind of intrigue that first drew me to history.
Because sometimes those mysteries can be solved. Another photo I found utterly captivating when I first came across it is held by Puke Ariki Museum and was originally described as an ‘unidentified couple’. It also features in Angela Wanhalla’s Matters of the Heart: A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand (2013) with the following caption:
New Zealand historians know very little about the degree to which Pākehā women and Māori men formed affective bonds, either as lovers or friends, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It seems apt, therefore, that this undated photographed is entitled ‘unidentified couple'.
However, the Puke Ariki catalogue entry for the photo now describes it as a:
Studio portrait of Wiremu Tutu Tahana (1835-1860) of Te Hua Village and his wife Mary Tahana (née Bishop) (1834-1904). The couple married on 1 June 1855.
Mary Bishop was born in Dorset, England, and Wiremu Tahana belonged to Te Ātiawa. It is a powerful and relatively rare nineteenth century photographic portrait of a Māori man and his Pākehā wife.
But just to complicate matters, John Feaver, the photographer to whom the studio portrait is attributed by Puke Ariki, did not begin offering photographic services until 1895 and the quality of the image might also lend support to a later date given photography was in its infancy in the 1850s. I’m no fashion historian, but the clothing worn by the couple might also suggest late rather than mid-nineteenth century.
So perhaps that mystery has not been quite finally solved either. But regardless, these are the kinds of images that stop you in their tracks when you first see them. I periodically return to the catalogue entry for the Māori musicians, hoping that one day, just as at first seemed to the case with Wiremu and Mary Tahana, someone might have finally solved the puzzle.
Aku mihi
Vincent O’Malley