A MORIORI GROUP

JOHN SULLIVAN

DESCRIPTION A group of Moriori, Wairua, Chatham Island, c. 1889

MAKER / ARTIST Karl Andreas Gerstenkorn (1854–1906)

REFERENCE Romeril Album (PA1-o-1333-10)

This photograph shows a group of unidentified Moriori men, women and children on the western side of Te Whanga Lagoon, Chatham Island. We know nothing about them as individuals, apart from what we may imagine from their appearance or surmise from historical circumstances. However, we do know something about the photographer.

German-born Karl Andreas Gerstenkorn (1854–1906) arrived in New Zealand from Australia in July 1888 to work with the studio of Eden George in Christchurch. His early dismissal from that firm led to a vituperative court case, which provided the Christchurch newspapers with copy for the next two years. In the interim, he travelled to the Chatham Islands with his business partner Thomas Attwood in July 1889, returning in October that year with a portfolio of images of the landscapes and people—European, Māori and Moriori—of the islands.

The albumen print featured here was mounted in an album of views of Chatham Island. The album was presented in 1895 to Captain George Romeril of the steamship Kahu, which serviced the Chathams. More than a century later, in 2006, the album was acquired at auction by the Turnbull Library.

The Chatham Islands, known to their original settlers as Rēkohu and to nineteenth-century Māori settlers as Wharekauri, were first inhabited around 1500 CE by voyagers from Aotearoa, whose descendants are known as Moriori. The arrival of Europeans in 1791 and Māori in 1835 precipitated a series of events that saw the Moriori population enslaved. Their numbers plummeted from an estimated 2000 in 1791 to 160 in 1863, when slavery was abolished. By the time photographers from New Zealand began visiting the Chathams in the late 1880s, these numbers had somewhat recovered.

Gerstenkorn’s photograph contradicts the established narrative that portrayed Moriori as an extinct or vanishing people. The members of the group face the camera with a questioning reserve. It is not clear whether they have consented to be photographed, or whether Gerstenkorn has encountered them by chance. While the exact circumstances may never be known, the photograph remains as an item of evidence for researchers—including, perhaps, the descendants of the sitters—to interpret.

And Karl Andreas Gerstenkorn? He acquired a photography business in Invercargill in 1891, and was a well-regarded photographer known for portraits and landscape views until his death in 1906, aged 52.

The arrival in Rēkohu Chatham Islands of Europeans in 1791 and Māori in 1835 was disastrous for Te Iwi Moriori. Their estimated numbers of 2000 in 1791 had plunged to 160 by the time of the 1863 census. However, the resilience and resolution of their descendants have seen a resurgence of Moriori identity and culture and of the social and economic development of the iwi.