Sataua, Savai'i, Western Samoa, 1982. From the series: Polynesia here and there

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

As his honours project in photography at the Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Glenn Jowitt chose to document a subculture that was completely foreign to him: the world of horseracing. The experience he gained of accessing the unfamiliar through photography set the course of his life: ‘Once I discovered that the camera is like a key to anywhere, I couldn’t get enough of it.’1

In 1980 Jowitt went on a study trip to the United States that further directed him to what became his life’s work: photographing people, particularly in relation to the cultures of the Pacific. At a New York workshop, former Life magazine editor Ruth Lester suggested he take note of the Pacific Islanders who so frequently appeared in his images of Auckland’s Karangahape Road and Queen Street — that they would change the face of the city. In the United States Jowitt also observed how often colour was used by leading documentary photographers, such as Mary Ellen Mark, and he decided to follow suit.

Back in Auckland, Jowitt began to photograph Pacific people in his Ponsonby neighbourhood. It was, he said, ‘like an adventure, where you popped your head through a door and there were new friends, new food, new ways of behaving’.2 The friends and acquaintances he met led to invitations to visit their islands, and Jowitt spent six months during 1981–82 photographing in Niue, Tonga, Sāmoa, Tokelau and the Cook Islands. This and his Auckland work culminated in a national touring exhibition in 1983, Polynesia here and there, and Sataua, Savai‘i, Western Samoa, 1982 became Jowitt’s signature image following its appearance on the exhibition poster.

The photograph was taken following a ten-day lull in fishing because of rough sea conditions whilst Jowitt was staying with the Va‘ai family on the island of Savai‘i. The men had just returned with a good haul from the night’s fishing. A boy waded out to meet and unload the canoes, and Jowitt captured his almost triumphal carrying in of one family’s catch against the subdued colours of clothing and canoe in the grey dawn. For Jowitt the image encapsulates the Pacific tradition of ‘bringing in the protein’, as well as the values of family cooperation and sharing.

A boy stands in the subdued colours of the dawn, triumphantly holding catch from a night’s fishing. He has waded out to help his family unload their haul – the first after a 10-day lull in fishing because of bad conditions at sea.

The friends that Glen Jowitt made in Auckland sometimes invited him to their island homes, where he photographed the local people. For him, this image from Sāmoa encapsulated the Pacific tradition of ‘bringing in the protein’, as well as the values of family cooperation and sharing.

Athol McCredie

1 Glenn Jowitt, telephone interview by Athol McCredie, March 2007.

2 Ibid.