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

Abstract

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.