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Tattooed Polynesian Guy at Pasifika

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Polynesian tattoo
Polynesian Tattoo
Tattooing is a traditional art form in Polynesian culture that was a mark of rank and warriorhood. Tattooing was an incredibly painful and drawn-out process in which the skin was actually chiseled! In pre-European days, the ends of pointed sticks were used to carve the flesh and rub ashes and charcoal into the wounds. Once the European settlers arrived, the sticks were abandoned in favor of actual chisels. And people complain today about how much it hurts! (More here about the origins of tattooing in the South Pacific and the art of Charles F Goldie, an early New Zealand artist who painted portraits of Maori with traditional tattooing, including ta moko, the face tattoo).

This photo was taken at the Pasifika Polynesian festival in Auckland, March 2007.


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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates. On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day. I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the str...
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The Watchman and Virgin River — Painterly Winter Landscape

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