Return to Coaxing the Spirits to Dance
This photograph is one of the earliest images of art in the Papuan Gulf. It was made by the Reverend William Lawes, who established the London Missionary Society's station at Port Moresby in 1874. Lawes had contact with Elema people who visited surrounding villages, and in the 1880s, he visited Maiva and its neighboring villages. However, this widely reproduced, emblematic image of three men displaying shields and a mask was taken not in Maiva but in Port Moresby, in a clearing near the mission station.
Lawes's images are autobiographical and document his personal interests as much as they do the art and people of the communities he visited. Thus, they establish a mode of representation, a visual style for how the art of the Papuan Gulf was pictured by outsiders, and a precedent for future "documentary" images of indigenous art. His photographs were distributed by Henry King's photography studio in Sydney. In a list King produced before 1894 offering Lawes's photographs, Young Men with Maiva Shields is number 73. It was probably taken before his mission colleague Robert Bruce left the Pacific to return to Scotland, having assembled a collection of 250 sculptures and ethnographic specimens (two of the shields pictured are now in the Glasgow Museum).
Many visitors, including Kathleen Haddon, photographed the towering architecture of the Papuan Gulf. Here, approaching the village of Maipua by water, she recorded the diverse heights of the buildings:
"The ravi at Maipua were of enormous size, the top of the gable being about sixty feet from the ground in some cases. Most of them had great screens over the entrance, and this, we found, was due to the fact that there was dancing going on inside in connection with the initiation ceremonies of some boys. Over the tops of the screens there bobbed four weird masks and the sound of drums and chanting came from within."
The figure shown on the board is anatomically correct and almost symmetrical, except that one set of limbs appears shorter than the other and one kneecap is slightly higher than the other. This recurring feature in boards from the Elema area was recently explained by a village elder in the community of Opau. The carvers of such boards intentionally made the figures' limbs and kneecaps slightly uneven in order to indicate movement, as it was the spirits themselves who danced during the masked performances.
The spirit figure on this board is highly animated, with its arms raised and legs bent in motion. The subtle position of the spirit's feet shows how the carvers of these boards have made them dance, just as the spirits themselves danced during the masked performances.
This figure, which has been exhibited just once before, is seen in its original context in the accompanying photograph by Paul B. de Rautenfeld. Only two figures of this style are known to exist. Paul Wirz took photographs of similar figures made out of vegetation holding a bow and arrow and positioned at the entrance to a longhouse, which reinforce the interpretation of irivake as guardian figures. An alternate interpretation, based on a local story, is that irivake were spirit figures and warriors who lived in the clouds and occasionally released bolts of thunder and lighting.
Paul B. de Rautenfeld was a retired Swiss customs officer who later studied ethnology and biology. He made three trips to New Guinea and Indonesia in the 1920s and wrote three unpublished accounts of his travels, including descriptions of his photographic activity. During Rautenfeld's 1925 trip to the Papuan Gulf, Benjamin Butcher, a London Missionary Society preacher stationed at Aird Hills, told him about a rare figure he had seen called an Iriwaki. Rautenfeld's diary relates the circumstances of their journey to see and photograph the figure:
"I proceeded at once to Maiaki in order to avail myself of the high tide. . . . Inside the front entrance [of a typical longhouse], on the right, there was Iriwaki, one of the rare specimens of its kind still remaining in the Urama District. The famous god of war is a flat effigy about five feet high, in black, red, and white with boar's tusks encircling the tip of his nose and a grass skirt surrounding his loins. Fiber tassels are attached to his ears and a mairi [neckshell] painted in white across his chest and white horse-shoe-like figures on his belly are much in evidence. His head, up-lifted arms, and hands are also marked with broad white lines. Instead of the legs there is a long pole which is stuck through the floor into the mud underneath the building. Though it was very dark in the men's house, I succeeded in taking a portrait of Iriwaki by means of a five minutes' exposure."
This exhibition marks the first time that Rautenfeld's photograph and the actual irivake sculpture are exhibited together.
This masterful example of a figure type called agiba celebrated Kerewa ancestors and the communal longhouse identity, thus ensuring success in conflict. We know the history of this sculpture thanks to several photographs made at various times and locations. It was first photographed by Paul B. de Rautenfeld on May 11, 1925. In October 1961 it was photographed several times by Roy James Hedlund, who later purchased it in Ubuo'o Village. This exhibition marks the first time the agiba and photographs of it are seen together.
Obtained in 1885 by the businessman A. P. Goodwin, this mask is one of the earliest ever collected in the Papuan Gulf. It depicts a clan totem, one of several from the gecko (epe) clan. Behind and above the gecko's face is a vertical line representing its body, complete with front and back legs. The mask, probably further decorated with feathers at the end of the sticks, would have been performed by a troupe of dancers wearing similar masks, thus celebrating the solidarity of the clans.
This mask represents a hornbill or a crocodile; the latter is the totemic emblem of a clan in Karama Village, located east of Kerema. Like the other hokore on view in this exhibition, this mask would have been performed in a group of similar masks.
F. E. Williams photographed, in parts, the entire ritual cycle related to hevehe masks in Orokolo. The cycle began with the construction of a new men's longhouse, where the masks were made in secret. Feasts marked different stages in the cycle. When the masks finally appeared in the village, women immediately recognized the masks that were important to their clan and danced alongside them.
Performances of large, elaborate masks were the central focus of community ritual. Called semese or hevehe in the Elema area, these masks could represent many different spirits—in this case, sea monster spirits with ferocious mouths and teeth. Semese masks were constructed in the longhouses and occasionally appeared in villages at stages of men's initiations and other rites. Their arrival was announced by the whirling sound of bullroarers, small, oval boards that were swung over the men's heads on bark fiber string. Men told the women that the sound was the voice of the spirits, and while it is probable that women knew the true origin of the sound, it did alert them to leave the village or go inside until the intermediate rituals were completed. Women participated in the dances at the end of the ritual cycle.
This interior view of a longhouse in Maipua Village shows the variety of masks and spirit boards, there called kwoi, that were kept inside. The style of this board is identical to that of another board in the exhibition from the Tomkins Collection.
In several locations, Lewis's photographs were some of the first to be made. Images made by the outsiders who followed him, such as Ernest Usher and Kathleen Haddon, often depict the same villages and shrines, so we can see the art, customs, and local individuals change over time. With Lewis's work, the corpus of pictures expands and becomes self-referential.
We no longer have documentation about where this board was made and used, but another kwoi in this exhibition with nearly identical designs was photographed by the anthropologist A. B. Lewis in 1912 at Maipua Village, allowing us to infer that this board probably came from the same clan and presumably from the same community. Photographs made during the early period of outside contact are critical to our understanding of the artistic styles, and social and physical contexts, of these boards.
This kwoi can be seen in a house interior in the upper part of a photograph made by Roy James Hedlund, who also collected the board.
This figure was collected in 1930 by the Swiss anthropologist Paul Wirz, the first foreigner to visit the Era River longhouses. As on many boards, bioma depict spirits in human form, often dancing. Wirz concentrated on taking photographs while collecting objects for museums. His publications incorporate sketches and photographs of many of the objects he collected, including this one.
Although many of Hurley's photographs were clearly arranged for the camera—including this one, showing a very rare form of mask—the images nevertheless provide our only record of the pictured objects' existence. Similarly to kanipu, these masks were said to be used to enforce bans on taking coconuts that were needed for ceremonial feasts. Hurley also made silent film footage of these masks in motion.
Play a video of these figures being danced.
Approximately ten years after Hurley created his photographs, smaller masks resembling this type were photographed in a different village by John Vandercook.
Frank Hurley made what is possibly the first cinematic footage of keveke masks. Keveke are similar to semese and hevehe masks. As elsewhere in the Gulf, the masks were intended to bring the spirits into the villages, where they mingled with the inhabitants. Hurley often asked local people to re-create scenes or demonstrate dances for him to photograph. He requested that these keveke be danced in front of the longhouse (daima) so that he could film them and make a still photograph.
Play a video of these dancers.