ADAMS 2007.300a-h

Documenting the greater surrounds of Indian Island in Dusky Sound – a remote fiord on the southwest coast of New Zealand – these photographs reflect on an important historical moment of encounter between Māori people and Pākehā (European settler).

The suite was taken as part of ‘Cook’s Sites’, a collaborative project by Mark Adams and writer and anthropologist Nicholas Thomas, which involved revisiting sites of first contact between Captain Cook and Māori communities of southern New Zealand. The Dusky Sound meeting occurred in 1773, when Cook moored his ship, the Resolution, in this beautiful and isolated bay, accessible even today only by boat or plane. On disembarking, Cook’s party was met by a small group of Māori – a peaceful exchange in which Cook shook hands and exchanged a traditional nose-to-nose greeting (hongi) with the group’s leader. The meeting was recorded by Cook’s artist William Hodges on a circular canvas, which depicted at its centre the Māori leader hailing the group from atop a rocky outcrop on one of the bay’s small islands. Adams’s haunting panorama responds directly to this painting, situating his camera – and the audience – in the footprints of the Māori, recording the event from the group leader’s viewpoint on the outcrop, allowing for a very different imagining of that first meeting.