640
and to the shore of the Hawaiian Islands. By 1850, many
men who had gone to California to seek their fortunes,
disappointed they turned to other opportunities to earn
their living, including apprenticeships in San Francisco
daguerreotype studios. Adventurous young men were
also drawn across the Pacifi c by the discovery of gold
in Australia in 1851. The more pragmatic adventurers
made the voyage with equipment, and a stock of supplies
to make daguerreotypes.
Hugo Stangenwald (1829–1899) and Stephen
Goodfellow were on their way to Australia when they
stopped in the town of Hilo in 1853. They unloaded
their daguerreotype equipment and made portraits of
American missionary families stationed in Hilo. Re-
ceiving recommendations as talented artists and sober
minded gentlemen, Stangenwald elected to remain and
operated a studio in Honolulu from 1853–1858. Good-
fellow continued on to Australia.
In the 19th century photographic studios were pri-
marily located in Honolulu. Photographers traveled
to the other islands in the Hawaiian Island chain and
set up temporary studios to make portraits and scenic
views. Throughout the 19th century, photographers
continued to migrate from California to establish studios
in the islands. Charles Leander Weed (1824–1903), a
well-known California photographer, arrived from San
Francisco in March 1865. He set up a studio in Hono-
lulu with his brothers and began making portraits. Like
many newly established photographers, he knew it was
good business to attract the Hawaiian royal family as
clientele. His large studio portraits (17 × 22 inches) of
King Kamehameha V and other chiefs, attracted local
residents to the Weed Brothers studio to sit for carte-
de-visite portraits.
Before coming to the islands, Weed had made mam-
moth views with wet-collodion plates of Yosemite Val-
ley, California. He was the fi rst experienced landscape
photographer to practice in the islands. He traveled
around Oahu and to the island of Maui with his mam-
moth camera and a stereo camera. His photographs
document the absorption of traditional Hawaiian com-
munities by the development of sugar plantations. Weed
focused on the newly built sugar mills, with tall smoke
stacks that dominated the island landscape, pushing
aside native houses made from pili grass, and taking
over traditional taro cultivation. He found it too diffi cult
to photograph the island landscape. Heat, humidity
and dust added to the existing challenges of preparing
wet-collodion plates. He departed for Hong Kong in
December 1865.
Island photographers imported supplies and recruited
photographers from the better known San Francisco gal-
leries. James J. Williams (1853–1926), founder of the
longest established family photo business in Honolulu,
arrived from Sydney in 1880. He had passed through the
islands in 1879 from San Francisco where he worked
for photographers I.W. Taber and Jacob Shew. In Hono-
lulu, he worked in the studio of Menzies Dickson (ca.
1840–1891), buying this business in 1882.
Williams not only had a thriving portrait business,
he was also actively involved in promoting the islands
through a variety of publications and exhibitions. Visi-
tor promotion provided a larger market for his images.
He prepared photo displays and albums for expositions
and displays in hotels, steamship and railway stations
throughout the American west and in Australia. He pub-
lished Tourists’ Guide (1882), and in 1888 he established
a monthly magazine, Paradise of the Pacifi c. Williams
felt strongly that visitors “want to... view something of
the native life [with]... a cocoanut tree somewhere in
the landscape.”
Eighty-six photographers operated Honolulu studios
in the 19th century. Most of these studios were owned
by American citizens. Horace Crabbe and John Meek,
Jr. were the only Native Hawaiians to operate a photo
studio (1867–1869). In the 1890s, there was an increase
in the number of photo studios operated by Japanese and
Chinese residents, refl ecting the changes in the island
population due to imported labor for sugar plantations.
Japanese photographers would often apprentice in a
Honolulu studio and then establish studios near rural
communities with large sugar plantations.
European and American government interests, domi-
nating global trade routes, led to sponsored scientifi c
expeditions to chart navigational routes and document
Pacifi c island countries. Germany, Britain and the United
States maintained a regular circuit of touring naval
ships to support their interests in the north Pacifi c. In
1874–1875 two British scientifi c expeditions that visited
the islands were accompanied by photographers. Edwin
Myers and astronomer J.W. Nichols spent three months
in the islands making observations and photographing
the transit of Venus in December 1874. Although their
photographs of the transit were not successful Myers
made some of the earliest known photographs of hula
performers. Due to the infl uence of the American mis-
sionaries, hula was seldom performed publicly. Princess
Ruth Keeliokalani, a high ranking chief, brought the hula
group to honor the visiting scientists. The following year
in July 1875, the British oceanographic survey ship,
Challenger, arrived in Honolulu from Japan. An offi cial
photographer was part of the crew, and special dry-col-
lodion plates were prepared in London for the voyage.
For Native Hawaiians, making fun at the expense of
foreigners’ ignorance and arrogance was at times dif-
fi cult to resist. When another group of British scientists
came through the Hawaiian Islands in 1882 on their
return from observing the transit of Venus in the north
Pacifi c, they went sightseeing in Hilo: “We found a
party of ladies at the top of the cliff dressed in Hawai-