Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association

In 1959, a serialised, illustrated encyclopaedia, The Book of Knowledge, published a photograph captioned “Fijian islanders preparing for a feast,” suggesting to readers that butchering a turtle prior to cooking was a common sight in the 1950s and a cultural practice among modern-day Fijians. However, the photograph had been taken around the turn of the century by a British colonial official, Basil Thomson, and published elsewhere by him and others in the intervening fifty years. How much post–World War II illustrative photography of Pacific Islanders in encyclopaedias was misleading in this manner? How much illustrative (particularly photographic) material from an era long past was presented mid-century as being evidence of contemporary life in the Pacific? Or, was preparing a turtle for a feast a long-standing tradition and, therefore, the date of the photograph immaterial? This paper investigates these questions within the context of the creation of The Book of Knowledge and other such compendia, as well as Euro-American stereotypes of Fiji and the Pacific.