Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 20, Number 11, 1 November 2003 — Forbidden places: Photographer Kapulani Landgraf explores loss of sacred sites, native rights and identity [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Forbidden places: Photographer Kapulani Landgraf explores loss of sacred sites, native rights and identity

By Naomi Sodetani For photographer Anne Kapulani Landgraf, the camera is a tool to explore and document her culture — and also to defend I it. "I use photography as I a weapon," she patently I declares. [

One of our islands' most exceptional kanaka maoli artists, Landgraf is a soft-spo-ken woman with shortcropped hlaek hair and a ealm, piercing gaze. Her award-win-ning photographs and mixedmedia sculptures honor ancestral connections to ancient landscapes. They also probe the legacy of colonization that destroyed these places and eroded modern Hawaiians' identity as nā po'e 'āina, the first people of this land. Landgraf's new book, "Nā Wahi Kapu o Maup' will be published next month by 'Ai Pohaku Press, designed by Barbara Pope. The book launeh coincides with a solo photographic exhibit at Aupuni Artwall at Nā Mea Hawai'i and Native Books at Ward Warehouse that runs from Dec. 6 through Jan. 10.

Inspired to find and visit Hawai'i's wahi kapu, forbidden sacred places, Landgraf has documented prominent geographical, cultural and archaeological features throughout the islands. Her first book, "Nā Wahi Pana o Ko'olaupoko ," explored the sites of Windward O'ahu, where she lives and works. "Nā Wahi Kapu o Mauī " features text written by the photographer and others that relate to these sacred places. Over the course of the seven-year project, supported in part by an OHA grant, Landgraf shot hundreds of sites, arduously trekking into

remote areas throughout the islands hauling her large-format camera gear. "I feel really fortunate to have been to these places that no one has been to for so long," she says. "When you have the whole plaee to yourself, you ean see the relationship that our ancestors had with the land, how mountain peaks and underwater ko'a shrines aligned. I was in awe." Landgraf has long documented Hawaiian arts and traditional practices for the Native Hawaiian Culture

and Arts Program and other Hawaiian arts and educational organizations. Widely exhibited, her work has been recognized with a bevy of prestigious visual arts awards in Hawai'i and abroad. This fall, Landgraf began teaching Windward

Community College's first course in Hawaiian visual arts. Inspired by the work of the treasured cultural historian Mary Kawena Pūku'i, the '84 Kamehameha Schools graduate majored in anthropology before

mastering in fine arts at Vermont College. Her ethnographic instincts, in fact, remain evident throughout her body of work. Since the 1970s, Landgraf, along with her former Windward College photography instructor Mark Hamasaki, has also documented community struggles, from resistance to the H-3 freeway to Waiāhole taro farmers' fīght for water. Her lens offers witness to precious landscapes under siege, while honoring surviving traditional practices inextricably bound with nature.

In a recent one-woman exhibit at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, "ku 'u ewe, ku 'u iwi, ku 'u koko" (my umhilieal cord, my bones, my blood), Landgraf says she wanted the mostly non-Hawaiian audience See LANDGRAF on paqe 18

Pāhfona ™—m™

Kapulani Landgraf (top) documented hundreds of sacred places on Maui, including Kanahō (above), Kanakakaloloa (top rt), Nu'u (middle) and Kawaialoa. Her photo-collage " Missionary Parfy" (at right) comments on the legacy of the 1 893 overthrow, including the exploitation of native culture and lands.

LANDGRAF from page 13 to confront colonization, "to look at the loss of Hawaiian rights." Sorrow and anger jump from the emulsion of photo-col-lages and mixed-media sculptures juxtaposing historical and original photographs. In one surreal historical image, a Bishop Museum archaeologist and his wife stand smiling amid thousands of bones excavated from the sand dunes of Mōkapu. Both are holding skulls like trophies or spoils of war. Other works explore the gradual toll of assimilation. In one photo, the viewer gazes through the keyhole-like opening of a warrior's helmet — "as if you're looking out," Landgraf explains — at familiar landmarks like the Moana hotel in Waikīkī and Royal Elementary, both built over the sites of destroyed heiau. Landgraf's emerging works mark her evolution from being a mere observer to an impassioned advocate asserting a long-sup-pressed Hawaiian viewpoint. "I was more naive when I first started," she says. "Now, as I get older, I want to go all out and risk being more political, more in your face, not so subtle like the landscapes," she says. Landgraf hopes her work "helps breaks walls and reveal injustices. I like the idea of challenging people and making them think." ■