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Photograph album of Fiji, 193-
94/92  
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Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Administrative Information
  • Biography/History
  • Scope and Content
  • Indexing Terms
  • Related Material

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Photograph album of Fiji
    Date (inclusive): 193-

    Note

    Possible range of dates based on photographer's biographical information, and subject references in photographs.
    Collection number: 94/92
    Creator: Ingleton, Geoffrey C. (Geoffrey Chapman), photographer.
    Physical Description: 1 album (83 photographic prints) : gelatin silver, 26 x 21 cm (album)

    Photographs are mounted on rectos and versos of 24 leaves of stiff gray card stock, two on each side, visible through two rectangular openings cut out on each page.

    Bound in tan cloth over boards, with black leather spine and corners; textured white endpapers.

    Spec. Coll. copy: bookplate on front pastedown of Geoffrey Chapman Ingleton, and his wife, the poet Nan Ingleton, with caption "Ex libris G. & N. Ingleton" below a drawing by Ingleton of their home "The Grange" in Parramatta, Australia. In beige cloth clamshell box with spine title "Fiji."
    Abstract: Album of 83 photographs, unsigned, but probably taken by Geoffrey Chapman Ingleton while traveling in Fiji in the 1930s. The photographs capture the ocean and landscape of Fiji, the native peoples, their dress, customs, games, and dwellings, and scenes of sugar cane cultivation, cattle ranching, and dolphin fishing on the islands.
    Language: Finding aid is written in English.
    Language of the Material: Materials are in English.
    Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library Special Collections.
    Los Angeles, California 90095-1575
    Physical location: Stored off-site at SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections for paging information.

    Administrative Information

    Restrictions on Access

    Open for research. STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF. Advance notice is required for access to the collection. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections for paging information.

    Restrictions on Use and Reproduction

    Property rights to the physical object belong to the UC Regents. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

    Provenance/Source of Acquisition

    Ex libris G. & N. Ingleton.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], Photograph album of Fiji (Collection 94/92). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.

    UCLA Catalog Record ID

    UCLA Catalog Record ID: 4233582 

    Biography/History

    Author, artist, cartographer, etcher, ship modeller, book and manuscript collector, publisher, and Royal Australian Navy officer. Geoffrey Chapman Ingleton was born in Bairnsdale, Victoria on May 14, 1908, and studied at the Royal Australian Naval College in NSW. At the age of 17, he embarked on a naval career that would span ten years, initially serving as midshipman aboard the HMAS Adelaide, and later, having been commissioned as a lieutenant, aboard vessels such as the Anzac, Tattoo, Vampire, and Cerberus. Ingleton left the Navy in 1936, and as a civilian, joined the Hydrographic Office in 1940, where he worked for more than 30 years until his retirement in 1973. Privately, Ingleton was an illustrator and etcher, and drew much of his artistic inspiration from his large collection of books, manuscripts, paintings, and maps on early Australia, and maritime exploration of the Pacific.

    Scope and Content

    The album opens with two portraits of Fijian women--a mother and daughter, perhaps--with their distinctive hairstyles adorned with flowers. One wears a large wristwatch, the other a pendant cross. A group portrait shows seven Fijian women in Western dress, holding their young children. There are also several portraits of Fijian men: one a handsome older man, the other a village elder, seated with his wives, mother or mother-in-law, and child, a warclub across his lap. Fijian men are shown at leisure--playing rugby, or dressed for dance, wearing printed barkcloth and hibiscus-bark-fibre dance-skirts, and headscarves, some adorned with whaletooth necklaces, and holding long spears, or spurred warclub known as "kiakavo"--as well as at work: dock hands unloading cargo, a fisherman with the carcass of a large dolphin he has caught, sugarcane plantation workers, and "cowboys" on horses, working a cattle ranch. Also included are several photos of unidentified white people--possibly the photographer himself, in the sugarcane fields, or driving a horse and buggy along the beach, or the photographer with his wife or other family members, driving an early automobile along a village road, and relaxing on the lawn outside a home shaded by large awnings and palm trees. Two interior shots of the home reveal a comfortable sitting room, furnished with rattan chairs, chintz curtains, artwork, and plants. The photographer has captured the natural beauty of Fiji in his photos of the bay filled with fishing boats, low hills in the distance; beaches, lagoons, rocky coves, and the exotic banyan trees with their tangle of seaweed-like aerial roots. Photos of a large stone church, and groups of Fijian students seated in white uniforms suggest the presence and influence of Catholic missionaries, although there are also seven photos of a Hindu religious procession perhaps, in which worshipers carry tall, multi-storied, canopied temples through the fields.

    Indexing Terms

    The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

    Subjects

    Fijians --Photographs.
    Fijians --Clothing --Photographs.
    Fijians --Social life and customs --Photographs.
    Fijians --Dwellings --Photographs.
    Missionaries --Fiji --Photographs.
    Fishers --Fiji --Photographs.
    Sugar plantations --Fiji --Photographs.
    Ranches --Fiji --Photographs.
    Sailboats --Fiji --Photographs.
    Rugby football --Fiji --Photographs.
    Railroads --Fiji --Photographs.
    Processions, Religious --Fiji --Photographs.
    Banyan tree --Fiji --Photographs.
    Hindus --Fiji --Photographs.
    Dance --Fiji --Photographs.
    Fiji --Photographs.

    Genres and Forms of Material

    Portrait photographs.
    Gelatin silver prints.
    Photographic prints.
    Photograph albums.

    Other Index Terms Related to this Collection

    Ingleton, Geoffrey C. (Geoffrey Chapman), former owner.
    Ingleton, Nan Furness, former owner.

    Related Material

    Part of the Photograph Album Collection (Collection 94)   in UCLA Library Special Collections.