This year, project intern Alice Bernadac spent three months conducting preliminary research on the photographic collections made during the Templeton Crocker Expedition and now housed in Paris and Cambridge alongside Senior Research Associate Lucie Carreau. Here Lucie and Alice write about the collection and the research process:

Led and partly funded by wealthy sailing enthusiast Charles Templeton Crocker, the 1933-1934 Templeton Crocker Expedition visited the Solomon Islands between the 2^nd of March and the 15^th of September, 1933. Accompanied by a small team of scientists, the expedition’s main goal was to conduct research in the field of natural history and healthcare. Concomitantly, however, expedition members formed large collections of ethnographic objects, and produced thousands of photographs of the places they visited, the people they encountered and the events they witness.

The bulk of the material collected was divided between the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu and the Field Museum In Chicago. Smaller collections of objects and/or photographs were sent to the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge. While the expedition’s scientific research has received some attention in the past, the ethnographic and photographic collections remain largely unexplored. The collections in Europe in particular have never been researched, probably due to the lack of access to information relating to the expedition.

Photograph:
Boy from Anuta, Temotu Province, Solomon Islands
Photographed by Toshio Asaeda, c.1933
© University of Cambridge, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Alice: ‘My contribution to the project consisted in researching and comparing the sets of photographs and archival material held at the two institutions to try to establish the uniqueness of each set, identify overlaps across the collection, and get a wider view of the expedition’s photographic activities. At MAA, the collection was formed of 562 photographic prints, 1 negative and 170 lantern slides. In Paris, the collection numbered 231 photographs and 6 negatives. The collection overlapped and I was able to identify 206 duplications. Only 25 photographic prints and the 6 negatives from the Paris collection are not present in MAA’s collection. Both collections offer rich photographic records of almost all of the islands of the Solomon archipelago that were visited by the expedition. Some islands, however, are better represented than others, in particular Rennell and Bellona.

Confronting these two collections has brought to light interesting aspects of the expedition photographic collections. For example, documents held in MAA’s archives suggest that the rich visual documentation of relating to canoes was gathered by Charles Templeton Crocker and other expedition members to contribute to A.C. Haddon’s research, which culminated in the publication of Haddon and Hornell’s Canoes of Oceania between 1936 and 1938. The vast majority of photographs are associated with the expedition’s artist, photographer and film-maker, Toshio Asaeda, an employee of the California Academy of Sciences. While a large proportion presents anthropometric characteristics and testify of the scientific purpose of the expedition, many others show a more artistic approach, capturing individuals or groups of individuals posing for the camera, smiling, or engaging in daily activities, rather than ‘types’ of people. His most personal photographic approach emphasizes Asaeda’s great skills as a portraitist’.

Alice Bernadac’s research has also brought to light nine audio-discs recorded in Rennell and donated by Charles Templeton Crocker to the Musée de l’Homme un 1934, as well as a second set, originally in the collections of the Musée de la Parole in Paris. Both sets are now housed at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.

Additional information on the expedition will be gathered in the following months as team member Lucie Carreau was recently awarded a Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant by The Art Fund to travel to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco to further her research on Templeton Crocker.

Lucie Carreau and Alice Bernadac