Christian Hedemann

But instead of returning to Denmark at the end of his contract, in 1884 he joined the Honolulu Iron Works, the largest manufacturer of sugar mill machinery in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

This allowed him to take portraits not only of the native inhabitants, which proved invaluable to ethnic studies, but also of Chinese and Portuguese workers and a small colony of Scandinavians.

In January 1889, Hedemann was one of the founding members and the first president of the Hawaiian Camera Club, which brought amateur photographers from Honolulu together with those he had met during his travels around the islands.

The club gave Hedemann the opportunity to follow and experiment with the latest techniques such as magnesium powder flash photography and photographic enlargements as well as the use of the so-called magic lantern.

[2] Hedemann died in Honolulu in 1932 leaving a collection of photographs which provide a record not only of his close-knit family and his faith in the industrial age but also of the islands themselves at the end of the 19th century.