Duncan Cole, who was born in 1969, is an Auckland-based photographer and cinematographer. Beginning his career as a photojournalist, Cole has been a commercial photographer in New Zealand, Australia, and Asia since 1990. Cole is renowned for his work as a cinematographer, for award-winning New Zealand music video clips and for his work on the feature film For Good which was directed by Stuart McKenzie and toured the international film festival circuit in 2003. Cole's photography has been included in magazines such as the UK-based Wallpaper, Australian Vogue, Hong Kong Elle and Marie Claire.

These four photographs from the 'Savage nobility' series (Acc. nos 2004.315-318) were created collaboratively by Duncan Cole (photographer), Chris Lorimer (fashion editor) and Shigeyuki Kihara (artist) for a fashion editorial entitled 'Savage nobility' which appeared in the New Zealand street magazine Pulp in 2001. Cole discusses the making of the 'Savage nobility' series as a theatrical production:

'We constructed scenarios with a colonial era flavour and directed Shigeyuki's characters - many of whom were played by local Pacific Island and Maori performers who were themselves rich characters - to create a series of vignettes which served as both a document of history and ancestry, and a contemporary portrait of today's Pacific Island and Maori culture in New Zealand.'(1)

It is primarily Shigeyuki Kihara's role as the initial concept developer and fashion stylist on the series that has resulted in such unique imagery. Kihara has a cross-disciplinary practice acknowledged and collected by institutions such as the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. She says: 'My medium is fashion and art and I like to play around with a concept I call "fashionised art", it's something that should be recognized as part of Pacific art and contemporary culture'.(2)

In addition to the influence of early ethnographic images that dictated the style of the series and some of the poses, Kihara was inspired to include body adornment as the principal sign of difference after viewing the exhibition '2 dusky maidens and 1 noble savage'.(3) The show featured the body adornment works of Sofia Tekela-Smith and Niki Hastings-McFall, artists represented in Queensland Art Gallery's Collection (Acc. nos 2002.184-192 and 2002.179-181 respectively), as well as that of Chris Charteris.

The four photographs are modelled on colonial portraiture. The two images, The high chief and his subjects and Tama and his wahine (Acc. no. 2004.317), rework the classic portraiture style used by New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew, who resided in Samoa between 1891 and 1939, and the Reverend George Brown of the Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, who lived in Samoa between 1860 and 1874. In these early works Polynesians were imaged either naked against exotic fictional backdrops or, if the sitters were of a high status, pictured in garments and poses of their choosing. The latter resulted in a hybrid dress-code that amalgamated Samoan hierarchical signifiers alongside that of the missionaries' impositions.

In The high chief and his subjects four public figures are formally arranged. The central, seated figure is that of the classically trained Samoan Opera singer Igelese Ete. He is distinguished by wearing an ie toga or fine mat, a weaving that is wrapped around high chiefs. His trade of the spoken word is acknowledged by his holding of the fue, an orator's fly whisk. Standing on his left is the Samoan playwright, comedian, and journalist Oscar Kightley, wearing a greenstone breastplate by the Maori artist Chris Charteris. Seated is the Maori national skateboarding champion, Che Ataria, who also wears work by Charteris as well as a customary rain cape by Sonia Snowden. Lastly, to the right of the composition is Shigeyuki Kihara, who wears a sperm whale tooth collar by Charteris and an outfit by top New Zealand fashion designer, Helen Cherry. Her hair adornment, and that of the other women imaged in the series, is by the Cook Islander artist Ani O'Neill, also represented in the Queensland Art Gallery's Collection (see Acc. no. 1999.038).

The two images Three sisters (Acc. no. 2004.318) and Daughter of the high chief (Acc. no. 2004.316) hold intriguing narrative possibilities. Veering from the ethnographic portraiture genre of the first two, they instead appear as a filmic snapshot of an unfathomable action. Both have an eerie edge which originates from stereotypical accounts of Polynesian cannibalism and witchcraft. What meal, being consumed by the two sisters, needs a violin accompaniment? Are these the fruits that Gauguin's models had not dared to lift off their platter to eat? Or are they morsels of some other kind? The 'Savage nobility' series uniquely documents the importance and saturation of contemporary Pacific and Maori culture in New Zealand society.

1. Cole, Duncan, Email to Maud Page, 2 November 2004.

2. Kihara, Shigeyuki, quoted in Mallon, Sean. Samoan art and artists. O measina a Samoa. Craig Potton Publishing, Nelson, New Zealand, 2002, p.189.

3. Kihara, Shigeyuki, Email to Maud Page, 3 November 2004.