[Hawaii]. [Western Photographica]

A Month in Honolulu [cover title]

[Various locations in Southern California and Hawaii: 1914]. Sixty-one leaves, illustrated with 214 mounted silver gelatin photographs, most with manuscript annotations in white ink; plus numerous mounted postcards, menus, and assorted ephemera. Oblong quarto. Contemporary black textured limp cloth over boards. Edges a bit chipped and tattered, inelegant black tape repairs to spine. First leaf detached, contents otherwise clean. About very good. Item #3378

A wonderful, annotated vernacular photograph album documenting a well-to-do family's vacation to Hawaii via brief stops along the West Coast in 1914. The album opens with a group image of the travelers in San Francisco, numbering around twenty-two men, women, and children, captioned "Southern California - Honolulu." This is followed by several pages picturing their initial journey from Seattle down to San Pedro, Los Angeles, and San Diego, before they departed for Honolulu on the S.S. Matsonia on June 17. A passenger list is included, and many of the images are captioned with the names of the subjects, providing a nice opportunity for identifying the travelers by cross-referencing the passenger list.

The group spends their vacation time at the Sea Side Hotel on Waikiki Beach, in bathing houses and on the beach, visiting local businesses, plantations, and other hotels, surfing, fishing, and more. Through the course of the album, much of the landscape of Waikiki is featured, providing a snapshot of the hotel and details of its surroundings, along with shots of a "Native Village," sugar cane fields and a plantation, pineapple fields, street views of Honolulu, a picnic for "Kids of all nations" at Waikiki, the Port of Honolulu, and more. The album also features a few early images of surfing at Waikiki Beach. In mid-July, true to the title of the album, the group heads back across the Pacific Ocean aboard the R.M.S. Niagara after just one month.

Most notable among the photographs are about thirty risqué images of local Hawaiian women interspersed throughout. The pictures of the "Native Girls" often feature them topless or scantily clad, identifying them with additional captions such as "Hawaiian Beauty," "Maidens bathing," "Girls," "Hula Hula Dancers," and "The Ex. Queen of Hawaii." One group shot shows ten Hawaiian women eating fish, captioned "'Lunau' [sic, Lu'au] or Native feast." Another side-view image of a naked Hawaiian woman is annotated, "The Natives are a sturdy race of people." There are also numerous images featuring other indigenous Hawaiian people in a variety of settings, including a couple of images showing a "Hawaiian boy climbing a cocoa nut palm," two pictures of "Native fisher boys," a "Native hut," "Hawaiian kiddies," a "Native canoeist," a "Group of Natives," a "Native Priest - looks as if he had been fasting for some time," and images showing "Natives selling 'Leis' for departing visitors" and "Native 'Leis' vendors on Honolulu." The images of the Hawaiian women, as well as the men, combined with the captions, provide an opportunity for further studying the ways in which affluent American mainlanders have traditionally viewed indigenous Hawaiians and other native peoples encountered throughout the world.

In addition to the passenger list mentioned above, the ephemeral items include shipboard menus, a program for an onboard concert, newspaper clippings, cigar labels, and postcards. The latter includes a series of forty-one vibrantly-colored postcards illustrated with Hawaiian fish. An interesting travel album detailing a trip to Hawaii at the outset of the First World War, with many notable observations on indigenous peoples in Honolulu, especially the young women of the island.

Price: $2,500.00