CAMERA READY
Narration Through Photography
Today I’m reading the photos taken from 1902-1930 of the Waikiki area from the
Ala Wai Canal to Diamond Head. The Ala Wai Canal in Waikiki was constructed from
1919-1928 and birthed from the Waikiki Reclamation Project by the Territorial
Government “to reclaim a most unsanitary and unsightly portion of the city.”
1
Under the
guise of sanitation and ugliness, the underlying goal of the Reclamation Project was to
transform Waikiki’s complex water system, which primarily consisted of marshlands
used for agriculture, into a built space for economic purposes. Competing narratives are
glimpsed in the photographs taken before and after the construction of the Ala Wai
Canal. Both groups of pictures are used to legitimize the incoming nation-state and
modernizing agendas of the Territorial Government, as well as to disqualify existing
epistemologies. I’m also looking at other photos that narrate the landscape and people-
scape in particular ways to continue various myths about Hawai`i. These early photos act
as the precursor for later photographic documentations that sought to capture the native
body and authenticate that presence. The photos taken at the Kodak Hula Show in the
mid 1900s stem from how these primary pictures of Hawaiians and Waikiki were read.
In Hawai`i, the photo illuminates physical beauty of both people and geography.
Various stories are told through the lens of the camera, that of welcoming, friendly
people and majestic, technicolor landscapes and seascapes. The genealogy of this
narration recognizes the importance of visual elements and the need to subsequently
construct the true from the visual.
With this commitment to the visual, the gaze towards
1
As quoted in Pukui, Elbert & Mookini, Place Names of Hawaii. Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1974; 10.
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Convention