Rev. John Burton frames the Fiji Methodist Mission, 1924

Bibliographic Data

ID22335380
AuthorsChristine Weir (Film Independent, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume8
Issue2
Pages171-191
Publication date2020-12-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of New Zealand & Pacific Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2050-4039 • E-ISSN: 2050-4047
PublisherIntellect (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/nzps_00036_1
OpenAlexW4241434341
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

In his role as General Secretary of the Australasian Methodist Missionary Society in the 1920s and 1930s, Reverend John W. Burton travelled each winter to one of the ‘mission fields’ in the South Pacific to inspect the mission’s activities, and to encourage and advise. Accompanying him was his camera; Burton had long been an enthusiastic photographer. Following his 1924 visit to Fiji he created two albums of his photographs, one illustrating the indigenous Fijian mission, the other the Indian mission. This article focuses on the ‘social biography’ of the photographs, and examines Burton’s choice and balance of subjects in each album, which cover educational and other mission activities, village and town scenes, landscapes and individual and group portraits. It also considers the placement and message in context of many of the individual photographs when they were later reproduced to illustrate stories in the mission magazine, Missionary Review , of which Burton was the Editor

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Biography · Indigenous · Portrait · Sociology · Visual arts · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

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