Archival photographs
Photographs of Duke Kahanamoku, printed and framed.
This page is about the work, and it sells nothing. The collection is at dukekahanamoku.shop.
What they are
Photographs of one man, made during his life
Duke Kahanamoku was born in Honolulu on 24 August 1890, in what was still the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, and he died there on 22 January 1968. Every photograph of him was therefore taken more than fifty years ago, and most of them a good deal longer than that.
He won five Olympic medals, three gold and two silver, across Stockholm in 1912, Antwerp in 1920 and Paris in 1924. He carried surfing from Waikīkī to the world, a practice that is Native Hawaiian and centuries older than him. He was elected Sheriff of the City and County of Honolulu in 1934 and served thirteen consecutive terms. He rarely brought any of it up.
The prints are made by Pictures Plus, a Honolulu gallery that has held a license for archival prints of Duke since 2016.
A note on this page
Why no photograph of Duke appears here
A photograph of him carries two separate rights, and the second is cleared one frame at a time, in writing. None of these frames has been cleared for this page, so none of them is on it. That is a deliberate state, not a gap waiting to be filled quietly: the work is meant to be seen framed, on a wall, at the size it was printed.
Provenance
Two rights, not one
A photograph is somebody’s copyright. The person standing in it is a separate right entirely. A license over the name and likeness of Duke Kahanamoku does not carry the copyright in a particular frame, and owning the copyright in a frame says nothing about the right to put his likeness on something for sale.
A print that accounts for both is a print you can hang without a question attached to it. That is the difference between a licensed edition and a poster, and it is not visible in the image.
Ask who made the photograph, who holds the copyright in it now, and under whose license the edition is authorized. Anyone selling the work properly will have the three answers ready.
How a print is finished
Archival is a standard, not an adjective
Pigment inks rather than dye. Cotton rag paper carrying no acid and no optical brightener. A mat cut from material that will not yellow and will not burn its own line into the sheet where it touches. Glazing that filters ultraviolet light. Hinges that can be undone without harming what they hold.
None of that is visible from across a room. It is the difference between a photograph that still looks like this in forty years and one that does not, and it is most of what you are paying for once the picture itself is settled.
Ask for the paper and the framing specification before you order anything. Anyone who prints well will tell you without being pressed.
In person
Where to see them
The Duke Kahanamoku Gallery is inside the Moana Surfrider at 2365 Kalākaua Avenue in Waikīkī. The hotel opened on 11 March 1901, and the 1901 building has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1972.
Framed archival photographs hang along the exhibition wall in that room, lit, at the size they were meant to be read. A picture of a picture on a screen is a different object, which is the other half of why this page does not attempt one.
The room, and how to find it: dukekahanamokugallery.com.
Ordering
This page sells nothing
There is no basket here, no price, no form and no email capture. Everything carrying his name that can be bought online ships from Honolulu, and is one link away.