Allen, Erica
Preparing the Royal Family Archive of the South Pacific
Faculty Mentor: Paul Adams, Department of Design, Photography
For my project, I went to Tonga in an effort to prepare the archive of the royal
family. The Kingdom of Tonga is the last monarchy in the South Pacific, and creating a
lasting digital archive of their heritage is important.
I arrived in the midst of celebrations for Her Majesty’s 90th birthday party, and the
celebrations overtook the entire island. No matter where I looked, there was some sort
of sign, balloon or decoration on behalf of the event. The Tongan people fully support
their royals and give everything they have in their honor. That being said, the people I
was arranging to work with were quite preoccupied with the events of the celebration
that they failed to respond to my emails until after the events had ended. I sent email
after email, but nothing availed from it.
I did not let that stop me, however. My frustration was growing as I waited for
them to respond, so I set out to find other ways to create a record. I came across a little
village on the opposite side of the island of Tongatapu from the capital called Nuku
Nuku. There, the people are very much country folk and rarely make it out to the capital
Nuku’Alofa. The villagers are hard workers and ever so humble, and do not have a lot to
show for it. One local source told me that it is not uncommon for them to work all day
and earn the equivalent five dollars. Five dollars a day does not leave enough money
for photograph when they are using their wages to survive. This is where I found my
project.
I ended up staying with a family in Nuku Nuku that I had never met before
stepping foot on the island. They were good people; farmers and devout members of
the Methodist church. They treated me like royalty in their home and made it their
utmost goal to go above and beyond to meet my every need. This family was by no
means wealthy, yet they sacrificed tremendously for me. I noticed that they only had a
couple severely outdated photos of their family, and that was the extent of their family
archive. I wanted to leave them with a series of quality images of their family that would
last and serve as a record, so I took portraits of them. After taking the portraits, I wanted
to take their archive a step further and desired to create a record of their village. From
that day forward I went about Nuku Nuku documenting the village. I took photos of local
children playing games in the street, women busily cooking a feast to bring to the
Queen Mum’s celebration, men roasting a pig for the same occasion, homes, schools,
scenery and many more. My goal it is to compile these photographs into a book to print
and share with the family that so kindly took me in, as well as the record-keeping
ministry in the Tongan government.
On the last day of my trip, I received an email from Kalolaine Pahulu Rapp, the
woman I was to have been working with the entire time. She apologized for the lack of
communication and wanted to make it up to me. I told her about the alternate project I
had been working on and she asked if I was still interested in helping with the royal
archive. I told her I absolutely was still interested and wanted to know more. She said
she still needed help creating digital copies of the historical photos and documents, for
which I was pleased to have been considered.
Because I was flying out that day, I did not have time to create a detailed archive
before my departure. So we came to an agreement. She would be flying to Los Angeles
(where I moved after graduating in April) in the next couple months for work and would
bring the physical archive to me. I will photograph the documents and send them back
with her when I have finished. At this point, the project I proposed is still in the works. It
will, however, be completed hopefully by the end of 2016. I am grateful that I was able
to be a part of two archiving projects during my trip to Tonga, and I look forward to the
completion of the latter.