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COLOUR, MOVEMENT AND MUSIC C H R I S S Z E K E LY DESCRIPTION
MAKER / ARTIST
REFERENCE
Men from Bellona, Solomon Islands, perform at the Tenth Festival of Pacific Arts, Pago Pago, American Sāmoa, 31 July 2008
Julia Brooke-White (b. 1942)
PA-Group-00421: PA12-8331-15
Colour, movement and music: a taste of the sights and sounds of the four-yearly Festival of Pacific Arts can be savoured in the photographs of Julia Brooke-White (b. 1942). Now living in Wellington, Brooke-White spent a decade immersed in Pacific cultures while living in Fiji in the 1970s and 1980s. From 1992 to 2008, she photographed four festivals hosted in turn by the Cook Islands, Sāmoa, Nouméa and American Sāmoa, depositing a selection of these images with the Turnbull Library in 2009. The collection now comprises more than 2200 colour transparencies, stored in environmentally controlled conditions and findable through the library’s catalogue. The first festival took place in Fiji in 1972, with support from the South Pacific Commission. BrookeWhite heard people still talking about the event when she arrived in the islands five years later, having sailed across the Pacific with her partner and young daughter,
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and pregnant with her second daughter. While working as a photographer for the Fiji Museum, she wondered about photographing the festival. The opportunity came in 1992 when the event was held on Rarotonga. There, she recalls riding a scooter with a pack full of camera gear and a heavy tripod strapped to her body. She couldn’t be at several venues at once, but BrookeWhite tried to ensure there was a record of each participating nation. In the earlier festivals it was unusual
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