In the early 1880s, Honolulu was a growing, cosmopolitan city. Hawaii's government had signed a trade treaty with the United States, leading to astronomical profits for sugar planters. Jobs were plentiful, land was available and a new king who reveled in modern technology was in power. It was enough to attract a 26-year-old photographer named JJ Williams.
Williams-an Englishman-moved to Honolulu in 1880. Within a few short years, he ran one of the most successful studios in the Islands. Known as the unofficial "photographer of royalty," Williams counted King Kalakaua, Princess Liliuokalani, Princess Kaiulani and other alii nui (high chiefs) as clients. The rich and well-connected living in or passing through Honolulu sat for sessions in Williams' Fort Street studio-among them Kaiulani's friend, writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Following Williams' death in 1926, the territorial legislature appropriated $3,500 "for the purchase from the Estate of J. J. Williams ... all negatives of photographs of personages and events of particular historical interest to Hawaii." That critically important collection of Hawaii history was transferred to the government archives.
Almost a century later, the Hawaii State Archives is sharing these extraordinary images of the Islands' past. Over the past three years, a dedicated digitization program has scanned more than thirty-five thousand historic images, including over twenty-two thousand glass-plate negatives and over ten thousand lantern slides, the majority by Williams but including several other photographers. "Many of these images have not been seen for generations," says state archivist Adam Jansen. "Of particular interest are 'outtakes' of royalty that never made it to print." And these aren't your average low-resolution web images: The wet-collodion glass-plate technology of the era preserved images with amazing sharpness and clarity. Using a $75,000 150-megapixel camera, archivists can digitize and upload images with unprecedented detail-a boon for those studying, say, the clothing worn by the subjects or objects they appeared with. High-resolution scanning also means that large images may be printed without much loss of detail. "What we're probably most excited about," says Jansen, "is offering these images to the public for free."
The discovery of glass-plate images of nineteenth-century Hawaiian Kingdom power couple Iosepa and Emma Nawahiokalaniopuu has already inspired a community education project to install prints of these mee Oiwi (Native heroes) in public buildings throughout Hawaii.
Browse the Digital Archives of Hawaii.
