Front of pe'a, Numangatini Kiriau

item details

NameFront of pe'a, Numangatini Kiriau

ProductionGreg Semu; photographer; 1994; New Zealand

Classificationgelatin silver prints, black-and-white prints, works of art

Materialssilver, photographic gelatin, photographic paper

Materials Summarygelatin silver print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

DimensionsImage: 477mm (width), 474mm (height)

Registration NumberO.048398

Credit linePurchased 2019

Overview

This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025).

Greg Semu was born in New Zealand of Samoan heritage and grew up feeling between cultures, ‘never fully standing in one or the other’.1 But in 1994 he decided to take the plunge and accept the ultimate mark of being Samoan — the pe‘a (male tattoo) applied with indigenous chisels by renowned tattooist Su‘a Sulu‘ape Paulo II. In the same year, he took this photograph of Numangatini Kiriau and others with tatau (tattoo) by Sulu‘ape, posing them against the Kiwi weatherboards of a South Auckland house. The photographs —along with Semu’s studio-shot self-portraits showing his own pe‘a — were exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery’s New Gallery in 1995, and given further coverage through the glossy weekly magazine Metro. The images represented not only the artistry of Semu but also of Sulu‘ape,2 and their public exposure lifted the lid on a thriving cultural practice unknown to most New Zealanders.

1 Arno Gasteiger, New Zealand—By the Way: Immigrant photographers & photographs of immigrants, Zimmerman, Auckland, 1996, p.106.

2 Keith Stewart, ‘A rare view of the Pacific way’, Sunday Star-Times, 24 March 1996, F2.