Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

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 strong sense that the spirit of the festival lived in its young performers, many of them practising, waiting, laughing, and preparing with genuine excitement to take the stage in front of their whānau and their community.

These are some of the photographs I took that day. The one I took of a young Samoan man waiting to perform has lived on this blog for many years now — that photograph is here. This post gathers a wider set of images from the same afternoon.

Preparing to Perform

Four young Samoan women in matching green traditional dresses with white shell and dark seed necklaces, waiting together before their stage performance. Frangipani flowers are tucked behind their ears. A man in dark sunglasses is visible in the foreground.

Fa'afafine performers from the Samoan Village, waiting before their performance.

The Samoan Village stage that year hosted a fa'afafine dance group. Fa'afafine — literally "in the manner of a woman" — are a traditional third-gender identity in Samoan culture, historically respected and integral to Samoan life for generations. They frequently perform at cultural events, and their presence at Pasifika is part of what makes the Samoan Village so vibrant. The four young performers in this photo were among the group's dancers, gathered together in matching green in the moments before they were called to the stage.

A joyful fa'afafine dancer captured mid-performance, laughing broadly with one hand raised in a dance gesture. A white lily is tucked into her dark curly hair and she wears a green traditional dress with a shell necklace, against a background of green foliage and blue sky.

A fa'afafine dancer mid-performance — pure joy in the moment.

And once on the stage, this is what she brought to it. There's no way to fake the expression on this face. She is completely in the moment, and completely happy to be there. This is my favourite image from the whole day.

Traditional Costume and Presence

A young Polynesian woman in a striking traditional costume made of woven pandanus material with red bead detailing, an ornate matching headpiece adorned with red beads and metallic flower decorations, and a delicate arm band tattoo visible on her upper arm. She stands against a blue sky.

A young performer in traditional woven costume with beaded detailing and an ornate headpiece.

The craftsmanship in Pacific costume work is genuinely extraordinary — hours of weaving, beading, and construction that give each community's traditional dress its distinct character. This piece uses pandanus weaving with red bead and shell detail, and the elaborate architectural headpiece suggests an occasion piece rather than everyday wear.

A traditional Polynesian dancer in an orange feathered headdress and matching bra top, with a bright orange grass skirt. She holds her hands in a delicate dance pose in front of her, with fellow dancers visible in the background.

A Cook Islands dancer in orange feathered headdress and grass skirt — a moment of stillness in the middle of the performance.

The orange feather headdress and grass skirt are hallmarks of Cook Islands dance costume — vibrant, dramatic, and designed to move. Photographing a dancer in the pause between motions is often more interesting than trying to capture the motion itself; the composure holds so much more than the blur.

A young Polynesian woman in a traditional tapa cloth outfit with distinctive brown, white and black geometric patterns. She wears an elaborate feathered headpiece with a tall white central piece and dark feathers extending outward, and a matching feathered shoulder piece. She smiles gently at the camera.

A performer in a striking headpiece and traditional tapa cloth costume.

Tapa cloth — made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree, beaten thin and decorated with geometric patterns — is one of the most distinctive traditional textile arts of the Pacific. Different communities have their own tapa-making traditions and pattern vocabularies, and formal costume incorporating tapa carries real cultural weight.

On Stage

Three young Polynesian women dancing in yellow and red floral traditional dresses, mid-motion with soft smiles. The image has been artistically enhanced with red and pink frangipani flowers floating through the air around them against a soft yellow background.

Three dancers in yellow and red floral costume — the frangipani flowers around them are an artistic touch that I added. They just seemed appropriate.

This is the only photograph in the set where I made a substantive change to the composition — the falling frangipani flowers around the dancers were added in post-processing rather than being present on the day. I liked the sense of visual celebration it added, though the joy on the middle dancer's face was entirely her own.

A Polynesian woman dancer in a bright pink floral dress with an elegant top-knot hairstyle decorated with blue and green flowers. She is captured in a graceful mid-dance pose with eyes closed, hands held delicately in front of her, in front of a white tent and green banana leaves.

A dancer in pink, mid-movement — the whole face composed with the music.

Pacific dance traditions are deeply expressive with the hands — much of the storytelling of a traditional dance is carried in the fingers, the wrists, the angle of the palms. This dancer is clearly deep in that language.

Between Performances

A group of young Polynesian performers in matching red floral costumes gathered together for a joyful group photo. Some raise their hands in peace signs and enthusiastic gestures. Red face paint stripes are visible on the cheeks of several of the group. Everyone is smiling and relaxed.

A group of young performers gathered together — the spirit of the day, in a single frame.

This group had just come off their performance and were in that specific mood people get into after doing something they'd been preparing for and doing it well. The red facial markings are traditional face paint that many of the young performers wear as part of their costume — a distinctive visual identity that carries through their group's whole performance.

Close-up portrait of a young Polynesian man wearing a bright red ei katu (necklace) made from carefully arranged red seed pods, and a black singlet. He stands beneath overhanging green leaves and looks directly at the camera.

A festival-goer with a striking traditional-style Polynesian tattoo on his upper arm.

Contemporary Polynesian tattoo work — drawing on the ancient traditions of tatau across the Pacific — has become a significant part of how younger generations carry cultural identity. This piece uses classic elements of Samoan or Tongan-influenced design: the geometric radial patterns, the interlocking motifs, the substantial coverage. Beautiful work.

Faces in the Crowd

An elder in traditional dress, watching from the grass — one of the quietest and most present figures I saw that day.

This portrait is one I've kept coming back to over the years. There's a stillness in the way she watched, a self-possession that felt like the anchor of the whole village around her. Pasifika is a young people's festival in energy — but the elders are what give it its weight.

A young Polynesian man sitting on the grass with earbuds in his ears, wearing a pale cream tank top and looking off toward something out of frame. Other festival attendees are visible sitting on the grass behind him.

A young attendee, sitting on the grass with his own soundtrack.

Not every face at Pasifika belongs to a performer. This young man was just at the festival — an attendee taking in the day, apparently with his own music playing alongside the stages. Somebody's brother, cousin, mate. Part of what makes documentary photography of a big cultural event work is remembering that most of the day is in the audience, not on the stage.

A young man with a striking red seed-pod ei katu (necklace).

The bright red seed-pod necklace is a striking piece of adornment — the kind of item that carries meaning as well as visual presence. Ei katu (Cook Islands Māori) and similar necklaces across the Pacific are given, worn, and traded with care; each has a story.

A Note on the Photography

I took all the photographs above with a Canon EOS 20D. I shot in RAW format, which meant every image required post-processing — cropping, exposure and brightness adjustments, sharpening, and resizing were handled using a combination of Adobe Lightroom, Topaz Photo, and Adobe Photoshop. With the single exception of the three dancers with the falling frangipani (where I added the flowers as an artistic touch), the images are documentary — the moment captured is what was there.

Pasifika Festival continues annually at Western Springs Park in Auckland. If you get the chance to attend, take it — and take a camera.

What is Bokeh?

Posted July 12, 2011

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Digital Art and Photography by John Corney

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