A maka'āinana stands with ki'i. - Photo: Courtesy of Chaminade University

Two photo exhibits capture rare
and soulful subject matter

By Liza Simon / Ka Wai Ola

Two new exhibits of photography demonstrate what we tend to forget in the Age of Cameras, Cameras and More Phone Cameras: Lest we forget, photography can be an art with heart and soul.

Brother Bertram Gabriel Bellinghausen must have known this. A Marianist monk who became the first principal of Saint Louis School, he roamed the Hawaiian Islands with a camera as big as a bread box between 1883 and 1905 on assignment for the church to document Catholic mission work. But he was driven to go beyond his call of duty by his passion for Hawaiian places and people, said Dr. Albert Lum, curator of the new Bellinghausen exhibit, which will tour the Islands in the coming months with funding support from an OHA grant.

“Bellinghausen really wanted to bring out the dignity of the common man and woman,” says Lum, pointing as evidence of this to some of Bellinghausen's portraits of Hawaiian families, posed in front of traditional grass houses, well-dressed but relaxed with smiling expressions. “Other missionaries were so intent on getting converts, they would have been dismissive of native life as little more than barefoot poverty, but Bellinghausen had the respect to let his subjects be their true selves,” said Lum.

Bellinghausen left behind a handwritten diary, which Lum is using to weave together a narrative about the historical context of the exhibition. Through the combined lens of the photos and the diary, we see a maverick monk documenting a time of historic turbulence in Hawai'i.

Born in Belgium, educated in Paris and brought up in America, Bellinghausen appears to have been a worldly individual who shared the occasional pleasure of wine drinking with King Kalākaua. He also had ties to Princess Likelike, who provided him a key to her Waikīkī residence. While he did not shoot personal portraits of the monarchs, he captured images of the milestone events of their times, including royal funeral processions and the 1900 Honolulu Chinatown fire. His fondness for the Hawaiian Kingdom surfaces in his penned diary account of annexation, where – despite his U.S. citizenship, he describes a “very sad day for all Hawaiians.”

Eventually the Catholic Church found Bellinghausen's worldliness objectionable and banished him in 1905 to a post in Texas, a move that may have forever closed the book on his photographic legacy, were it not for a Saint Louis art teacher, who in 1964 happened on a bin full of photographic glass plates packed so tightly that Hawaiian heat and humidity hadn't destroyed them. In 1996, a Marianist brother in the Texas home of the long-deceased Bellinghausen discovered the monk's handwritten journal and was intrigued enough to trace its many references about a photography collection to the Saint Louis campus. Following this, the church decided to posthumously honor Bellinghausen's talents by moving part of his collection to the Marianist archives in Ohio, leaving behind a portion of more than 800 plates; some of these were organized into a 1995 exhibit that marked the 50th anniversary of Marianist education at Chaminade University.

An avid fan of Bellinghausen's work, Lum, who is an English professor emeritus at Chaminade, said the monk's ability to photograph in such exquisite detail is a real gift to modern day residents of Hawai'i. “In looking at these images, you can see how different the landscape is today yet the people look contemporary so that you really feel you know them.”

Reawakening features photographs of children and their incarcerated or formerly incarcerated mothers. Below, 9-year-old Kea's image was taken by photographer Laurie Callies. Kea photographed her mother, Ana, at left, who wrote of her daughter, “I hope she will always know that no matter what happened in the past, I never stopped loving her or forgot about her.” - Photo: Courtesy of ProjectFocus Hawai'i Inc.

Reawakening

Meanwhile, two educators-turned-photographers – Laurie Callies and Lisa Uesugi – advise us to not to overlook the importance of either those family photo albums nor the “ritual” that goes into making them. For some parents, the stresses of everyday survival make it impossible to give a visual record to their kids, said Uesugi.

Four years ago, she and Callies started the nonprofit ProjectFocus Hawai'i, which teaches at-risk children to use the camera as a tool for self-empowerment. They worked this summer with 11 children of incarcerated mothers. First, they shot individual portraits of each child. Then began the instruction with 35 mm cameras in hand in preparation for the big day, when the kids would reunite with their moms and snap their portraits. In order to truly capture the moment and make the memory last, keiki and parents also wrote narratives about one another. The results are on display in the new exhibit, Reawakening: a Portfolio of Portraits of and by Children Reuniting with their Mothers, presented for public viewing on the third floor of Macy's Ala Moana.

9-year-old Kea's image was taken by photographer Laurie Callies. - Photo: Courtesy of ProjectFocus Hawai'i Inc.

“Children of incarcerated moms are innocent victims of a stigma. They need an outlet for their feelings but they are in public schools where art programs have been cut back. Learning photography is a relatively easy route to positive self-expression,” said Uesugi, who adds that the selected student participants ranged in age from 9 to 17. All the moms in this summer's program are inmates at either the Women's Community Correctional Center, residents at the correctional halfway house Ka Hale Ho'āla Hou No Nā Wāhine, or have been released into the community.

“All put a lot of thought into how they wanted their moms to look in their portraits. We heard from the mothers that the narrative gave them a chance to sit down and really think about what they want to say to their children,” said Uesugi.

Not every photo in the exhibit has that smiling “say cheese” look of family albums, observes Uesugi, “One thing for sure you will see in each picture is an expression of truth, and it is very moving.”