1. Nicholas Thomas, ‘Presence and Absence: An Introduction’, in Photo-museology: The Presence of Absence and the Absence of Presence, by Mark Adams and Nicholas Thomas (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2022), 18.
From his days as a schoolboy visiting Canterbury Museum, museums have been a source of intrigue for Mark Adams. He was taught very little about New Zealand — or specifically Māori — history at school, but at the museum he learned about the history of human settlement in the South Island and the excavations of early Māori sites at Wairau Bar in 1930s and 1940s.
Some of Adams’ earliest photographs document the presentation of taonga Māori and the tūpuna portraits of Gottfried Lindauer at Auckland War Memorial Museum and Auckland City Art Gallery.
Adams’ interest in the museum as a quintessential site for cross-cultural encounters and meaning-making intensified through his involvement in the international transdisciplinary research ‘Pacific Presences’ project, which ran from 2013 to 2018, and through his friendship and ongoing collaboration with Australian anthropologist, academic and museum director Nicholas Thomas. Their 2024 book Photo-museology: The Presence of Absence and the Absence of Presence is a culmination of their work together.
‘While museums are associated with permanence, they in fact seem to be constantly in flux,’ observes Thomas. ‘The debates around them have moved swiftly and critique has recently intensified. Our projects were motivated from the start by an interest in generating critical histories of colonial entanglement, and the revelation of often hidden histories of dispossession. But we were also inclined to be affirmative about the potential of collections that, too often, are now perceived reductively, simply as toxic legacies of colonial violence.’1
07.01.1980. Auckland War Memorial Museum. First attempt at museum as subject
22.12.2000. Ethnography store of the British Museum. Orsman Road. Hackney. London. England. Waka gifted on the occasion of the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York to Rotorua, June 1901. Te tohunga whakairo: Tene Waitere
01.12.1995. Forster Herbarium. Royal Botanic Gardens. Kew. London. England
08.02.2010. Fiji clubs. Bevan store. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Downing Street. University of Cambridge. Cambridge. England
18.11.1997. Staatsbibliothek Berlin State Library. Berlin. Germany
Reinhold Forster’s journal from Cook’s second voyage to New Zealand in 1773
17.11.1997. Staatsbibliothek Berlin State Library. Berlin. Germany.
07.07.2015. Tattooed female figure from Aitutaki Cook Islands. Curator Michaela Appel. Museum Fünf Kontinente. Munich. Germany
03.07.2015. Südsee store. Museen Dahlem. Berlin. Germany
08.07.2015. Linden-Museum. Stuttgart. Germany. Hoe acquired 12 October 1769 on Cook’s first voyage. Tūranganui-a-Kiwa Gisborne
08.07.2015. Linden-Museum. Stuttgart. Germany. Hoe acquired 12 October 1769 on Cook’s first voyage. Tūranganui-a-Kiwa Gisborne. Ulrich Menter and Steve Gibbs (Ngāi Tāmanuhiri)
22.12.2000. Ethnography store of the British Museum. Orsman Road. Hackney. London. England. Waka gifted on the occasion of the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York to Rotorua, June 1901. Te tohunga whakairo: Tene Waitere