Teorías de liderazgo

According to Tikao, “The ahua is the likeness of the face of a person or the appearance of a thing; its resemblance. Take a photo of a man or of a woman or of a place and you have his or her or its ahua” (Tikao & Beattie, 1990, p. 77). Tikao was comfortable about his photographic likeness being taken and my Tikao whānau are fortunate to have images of him. Elsdon Best preferred “…’the term ‘semblance,’ and sometimes ‘personality,’ or ‘representation,’ to describe the meaning of ahua” (Best, 1901, p. 14). According to Best’s sources, manifestation into shape is demonstrated through the tribal narrative of Maui turning into a pigeon ““Katahi ka whakaahua i a ia ki te kereru,”- then he formed himself into a pigeon, i.e., took the form of the same” (Best, 1901, p. 14). Whakaahua literally meaning ‘cause to take form’ is generally attributed to photography, although Mead (1984) defines the term as “…a picture to look at”. I am alerted by the example recorded by Best that a form can change and in the likeness may manifest some conceptual ‘thing’ from the original source.

It was a useful exercise for me to revisit early Māori attitudes to photography but the search revealed an underdeveloped area of scholarship. I could, however, call on a small selection of historic anecdotal snippets, and review Kāi Tahu use of the medium up to today.

I extended this search of ‘making a likeness’ to include the earliest artistic encounter with South Island Māori. On Tuesday 6 April 1773, William Hodges on Indian Island in Dusky Sound made a red chalk12 drawing of the people, including two women that he encountered there. Naturalist and artist Georg Forster (1773) wrote in his journal13 “…Mr Hodges immediately took sketches of their countenances, and their gestures shewed that they clearly understood what he was doing; on which they called him toa-toa. That term being probably applicable to the imitative arts” (Forster et al., 2000, p. 86). Two from the whānau group visited the boat again on Monday 19 April 1773, including a young woman, and Forster’s entry records that “The girl, seeing Hodges, whose pencil she had much admired, made him a present of a piece of cloth, of the same kind as those which the man had given to Captain Cook and my father.” (Forster et al., 2000, p. 98). The young woman singled Hodges out and gave him a present equal to the Captain’s, so can we infer from this that she was not disagreeable to Hodges drawing her likeness.

A sacred colour of the times.

Likenesses by drawing, painting and printmaking would soon be replaced by analogue photography during (and documenting) the period of New Zealand colonisation. On the cusp of this change in technology Eliza Hobson (wife of William Hobson Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand) remarked on Māori responding to her painted portrait. In a letter to her friend Emma Hamilton Smith she wrote, “My picture is their greatest admiration, they think it is a spirit and will sit themselves down before it and feel it all over and then come and feel my face, and back to the picture again.” (Porter, Macdonald, & MacDonald, 1996, p. 32; Wanhalla & Wolf, 2011). Dunedin- based photography firm Burton Brothers, led by Alfred Burton, took the new camera technology through the King Country in 1885. Burton writes in his diary of 6 May of his experience in the area of Parekino, “I made several studies here, notably of a very fine woman named Ngakura, but was a good deal hindered by the timidity of the Natives at the sight of the camera, which they called ‘taipo’ (devil) (Burton Bros, 1886, p. 8). During his nine week sojourn Burton, who calls himself “Tangata whaka-ahua (literally "the man who makes the likenesses")” (Burton Bros, 1886, p. 9), records unwilling and agreeable Māori subjects. A highly tattooed man refused in no uncertain terms, as do a couple who cover their faces with clothes though their reasons cannot be communicated (Burton Bros, 1886, pp. 12-14). Certainly Burton’s photographs of attractive Samoan and Tongan women (Camera in the Coral Islands series) that he showed some Whanganui youths appealed, and resulted in them “…kissing them with great ardour” (Burton Bros, 1886, p. 12). Burton (1886) also relates the ultimate insult14 given by two women who made protest against his un-permitted photography when:

…the ladies, intuitively divining the situation, and simultaneously turning round, solemnly assumed a posture of "flexure and low-bending" [shade of Shakespeare, pardon!] certainly not suggestive of respect, but rather of the most withering contempt for Pakehas in general, and for this Pakeha and his camera in particular. (p. 12)

Kāi Tahu historian Angela Wanhalla in her paper Indigenous Histories of Photography finds the dominant narrative in the scholarship on New Zealand photographic history of Maori one of “…commercial and scientific exploitation” (Wanhalla, 2013, p. 13). Working with communities for her own oral history doctoral research gave Wanhalla unique “…access to family photographic archives” and a wealth of photographic material was revealed that contradicted her preconceived notions that “…ordinary Maori were rarely consumers of photography” (Wanhalla, 2013, p. 11). Wanhalla calls for attention to an alternative “…vernacular tradition” that promises “…a human story” (Wanhalla, 2013, p. 13) Wanhalla provides such a

narrative in The meaning of ‘colour’: photography and portraiture, 1889-1904 through a discussion on the likeness made of Robert Brown, a gentleman of mixed race from Southern New Zealand in the Nineteenth Century (Wanhalla & Wolf, 2011). In 1889 a commissioned photograph was made of Robert Brown and after his death in 1898 his daughter-in-law Helen Brown commissioned a painted colour portrait in 1904. Specific instructions by Helen Brown were communicated to the portrait artist (as noted on the back on the photograph) requesting a close to real skin tone, i.e. not whitened. Wanhalla’s narrative of the photograph and portraiture reveals a story of a working class Southern family who embraced portraiture, were comfortable with their mixed heritage, and in charge of photographic representation.

From a cherished whanau portrait to others celebrated by hapū and iwi. The Church Te Kotahitanga at Moeraki and the painted stained glass windows, including a panel of Kāi Tahu rakatira Matiaha Tiramorehu, are considered a taoka by Kāi Tahu and New Zealand Historic Places Trust. Installed in 1893, the illuminated panels made by John Hardman & Company in Birmingham are now “…thought to be the earliest example of stained glass with the image of a Maori person, and the earliest depiction of a New Zealand born individual”, the likeness is based on an 1870’s photograph from the collection of Rev. T. A. Pybus (New Zealand Historic Places Trust, 2010). Churchgoers and visitors to Te Kotahitanga can still reflect upon Tiramorehu today.

I found likenesses around me, such as in local un-carved whare (buildings), where photographed, drawn and painted ancestors including landscapes adorn the walls. Many Kāi Tahu whare were originally unadorned with carving but whānau had a tikanga regarding photography of whakapapa as a genealogical record. Wanhalla explains how portraits “…made ancestors alive again and allowed them to be part of significant events, particularly tangihanga (funeral rites)” (Wanhalla & Wolf, 2011, p. 117). According to National Museum photographer Alan Marchant (Ngāti Hauiti), “…the photographic presentation of our ancestors join the symbols and art of the meeting house to become part of the genealogical journey” (Marchant, 1996, p. 240). Tapsell draws the relationship even closer, stating that portrait representations of ancestors particularly produced at tangihanga, “…are the ancestors” (Griffey et al., 2008, p. 21). And so it was that the Mō Tātou exhibition at Te Papa included a portrait component, nine images of tūpuna labeled ‘Faces of Ngāi Tahu’, which were a “…tangible expression of whakapapa and in relation to Te Kereme, the Claim and Claim settlement which many raised and championed in Parliament or lobbied about”15. When Mō Tātou toured the South Island to Christchurch in 2010, Canterbury Museum

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curated an accompanying exhibition called Te Hokinga Mai that included a room full of portraits of tūpuna. These tūpuna whose likenesses were made in oil, pencil, watercolour, silver bromide, printing inks, watched over the exhibition, and their descendants were able to visit them.

These heritage images of past likenesses are naturalised by their use in everyday situations. Photographs in the home, church and meeting house are legitimised as a way of representing the ancestor in the way that carving also does, and they evoke the ancestor’s image for descendants.