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Utah's Foremost Platform for Undergraduate Research Presentation
2021 Abstracts

Hapa Hawaiians: Eugenics and Pictorialism in the Colonization of the Territory of Hawaii

Presenter: Megan Orr, College of Humanities, Art History
Authors: Megan Orr
Faculty Advisor: James Swensen, College of Humanities, Art History
Institution: Brigham Young University

Visitors to the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909 had no shortage of stimulating exhibitions. Those entering at the South Entrance would pass under a traditional Japanese torii gate nearly fifty feet tall. They may wander past the life-size elephant made of exotic nuts in the California Building, a scaled model village where the Filipino Igorrotte people performed in loincloths, or an exhibition that disappointingly only survives in images boasting, “Prince Albert: The Educated Horse”. The Fine Arts building touted works by El Greco, Van Dyk, Sargent, and Edward S. Curtis. But another series of effective artworks were found across the courtyard, in the newly-incorporated Hawaiian Building. Caroline H. Gurrey’s pictorialist "Hawaiian Types" photographs were declared by one critic as “the finest specimen of art photography in the Hawaiian islands.” This series of forty-eight portraits highlighted "hapa" or mixed-race children in the Hawaiian Islands. The titles for each piece noted each race of the subject's heritage. Gurrey utilized pictorialist techniques to create reverent studies of race and beauty. However, her portraits were subsequently adopted by the 1909 Exposition and took on a very different purpose. Contemporary perspectives of Hawaii as an escapist paradise are a relatively modern invention. To the average American in 1909, Hawaii was a place of mystery and fear. Eugenicists of the time placed Hawaiians "at the top of the Nonwhite hierarchy", but violent clashes between Americans and Native Hawaiians had tainted general feelings toward the islands' inhabitants. This paper maps the public perception of Hawaii and American commercial and political interests in the territory, and how Gurrey's portraits were weaponized as eugenic propaganda to assuage racial fears of white American agriculturalists in order to commercialize the islands and strengthen American political attempts to further colonize the territory.