The year was 1968. Italian-American photographer Franco Salmoiraghi had just arrived in Hawai‘i, the island air hot with protests erupting across the state. He had accepted a position teaching photography at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where he remained for three years, but the demonstrations enthralled him. In the mid-1970s, and for the next three decades, when Native Hawaiian activists arrived on the shores of Kaho‘olawe in an effort to halt test bombing being conducted by the U.S. Navy, Salmoiraghi’s stark, black and white images memorialized the landings on and desolation of the isle. When protestors staged a sit-in at the sacred site Wao Kele O Puna on Hawai‘i Island, he photographed the demonstrators disputing the development of a planned geothermal plant in his signature monochromatic style.
Long before the advent of digital cameras, Salmoiraghi’s images provided a visual diary of Hawai‘i, and they continue to evoke raw feelings long after the moments they depict have passed. The pioneering lensman was one of the first “street photographers” in Hawai‘i, documenting everyday objects or scenes and turning them into otherworldly visions that conjure intimacy, spirituality, and mystery. Like his documentary work, which recorded important occasions in Hawai‘i’s history, his landscape images honored sacred sites—some of which no longer exist today—like the spring-fed pool Queen’s Bath in the Big Island area of Kalapana, the historic fishing village that was engulfed in lava from Kīlauea volcano.
