Volkenkunde Munich. Photo Maia Nuku.

One of the highlights of last year was our research trip to the Staatliches Museum fur Volkenkunde in Munich where Michaela Appel, curator of Indonesian and Oceanian collections, hosted us for two days in the museum stores (18-19 November 2013). Continuing our itinerary of visits to major European museums to investigate Oceanic collections, we were joined by our project colleagues, photographer and artist Mark Adams visiting from New Zealand and Elena Govor who had scheduled a visit through Europe at the end of a research trip to Russia in order to continue investigations into the whereabouts of Marquesan artefacts collected by members of Krusenstern’s voyage to the Pacific (1803-6). Two years ago we visited Tallin and Tartu together where we documented artefacts acquired by crew members of the Russian-commissioned vessels, specifically Baltic Germans who were on board Krusenstern’s expedition and Elena’s idea was to build on this further. Curator Michaela Appel has researched and published on the Krusenstern voyage artefacts currently in the collections in Munich and was happy to collaborate further, organising for Elena to have full access to the museum’s archives including the registers and inventories which document the original transfer of items into the museum. This is providing the kind of detail Elena requires to fine tune the profiling of individual collectors within the expedition as a whole.

At lunch we took the opportunity to visit the museum’s wonderful permanent galleries and were able to reconnect with colleague Hilke Thode-Arora who was flat out finalising details for her forthcoming exhibition: ‘From Samoa with Love’. The exhibition presents Samoan ethnography, photographs and archives associated with German brothers Fritz and Carl Marquardt who organised for travelling groups from Samoa to visit Germany between 1895 and 1911. The exhibition is now open (31^st Jan – 5^th October 2014) and was reported in the Samoan press with very positive reviews. Tackling sensitive and complex issues, the Samoa Observer reported that the exhibition “asks deep questions about the attitudes of the time towards travelling cultural groups that toured Europe extensively at the time” (Samoa Observer, Wednesday 29^th January 2014). Hilke explained that a component of the exhibition will travel later this year to Pataka Art+Museum in Porirua, Wellington NZ where she hopes members of the Samoan community will be able to engage closely with photographs and archives and continue to move the dialogue enabled by the exhibition forward.

Maia Nuku, Julie Adams, Elena Govor, Mark Adams and Michaela Appel. Photo Maia Nuku.

Returning to the stores Julie and I began to work through some of the museum’s Micronesian collections which are absolutely superb. Inspired by the impressive façade of the building, Mark Adams meanwhile was loading film and preparing to take his Deardorff camera outside to set up a long exposure shot before the light faded. Always with an eye out for vintage camera equipment, Mark was quick to spot an old camera tucked in amongst the artefacts on one of the open shelf storage in the stores! Enquiring about it, Michaela explained that it was a Gaumont Stereo Spido Ordinaire (8.5 x 17 inch) and that it had belonged to her grandfather Otto Hongimann who had travelled to Kashmir, Ladakh and Baltistan in 1911-12 on an expedition to the region.

Expedition book. Photo Maia Nuku

Very soon the two were lost in discussion, holding plates up to the light, comparing and discussing the various qualities one might achieve in the print. The beautiful sepia print photographs Hongimann produced, along with excerpts from his letters and personal archive, have been collated into a wonderful large-format book but it was quite something of course to encounter the camera itself with all its accessories, laid out alongside the museum’s ethnography collections.

Mark Adams & Michaela Appel. Photo Maia Nuku.

They certainly have strong personalities these marvellous grandes dames of the camera world and Mark thrives on experimenting with their manual technology. He showed us how the camera would have operated – sliding and clicking the various mechanisms to demonstrate how one might load film to produce specific effects. Mark is producing a series of works for our project which document and interpret our collaborative work in European museums. As well as giving us insight into our own research process, his photographs capture the subtleties and specifics of the unique museum environments in which we work. Inspired by the architectural façade of the museum, galleries and storehouses in which Oceanic collections are housed, exhibited and displayed, Mark’s photographs take us further … incredibly he manages to distil something of the unique atmosphere of these places into something tangible, something you can hold in your hand, which gives you an opportunity to focus, reflect upon and appreciate precisely what it is that you are doing there yourself.

The Deardorff. Photo Maia Nuku.

Maia Nuku