Native Hawaiian artist Kapulani Landgraf has captured black-and-white photos and portraits of prominent Native Hawaiians, Hawaiʻi landscapes, and pressing issues like a controversial highway project.
The works have now gained international recognition.
Selections from Landgraf’s “Nā Wahi Kapu o Maui,” a series of black-and-white photographs of sacred sites in Hawai‘i, were on display at Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates until last month.
More than 8,000 miles from Hawai‘i, Landgraf’s photos showed the mountain ranges of Maui accompanied by her poems.
Landgraf’s documentation of the H-3 project on Oʻahu was acquired by the Whitney Museum in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art during the 2022 Hawai‘i Triennial.
“It’s an honor to be part of their collection,” she said. “Especially the work with H-3 because it was such an important documentation in film photography.”
In 1989, Landgraf formed the collective Piliāmoʻo with Mark Hamasaki to document the construction of the Interstate H-3 project over eight years. Piliāmoʻo means “to cling.”
The controversial freeway construction project connected Pearl Harbor to what is now the Marine Corps Base in Kāneʻohe. The project, first discussed in a public meeting in 1965, opened to the public in 1997.
Activists protested the project, citing concerns about the desecration of cultural sites, the displacement of communities, and environmental impacts.
Landgraf was in her early 20s when she first started documenting the project. She said she took a student approach and emphasized the importance of documenting the land before the construction.
One black-and-white photo gives an eerie look into the project. A crane towered over vegetation, and already had a road alignment for the highway. The Koʻolau mountain range is prominent in the background of the photo.
“We were in a rush because things were rapidly changing from one week to the next,” she said. “We didn’t think of the impact that it would have had over 30 years ago. Recording something we hoped was supposed to be the last earthwork project in Hawaiʻi, but that didn't happen.”
Landgraf has always had an interest in cameras, particularly film cameras. She was 5 years old when she acquired her first camera, bought for 25 cents at a carnival at Saint Ann’s Church in Kāneʻohe.
She still has the secondhand Kodak film camera to this day. That's something she talks about with students as a professor at Windward Community College on Oʻahu.
”If you take care of things, then it can last forever,” she said.
As an artist, Landgraf prefers being behind the camera rather than in front of it.
“I don’t like talking, so the camera was a way to not have to do that. Let the pictures say it,” she said.
Landgraf’s specialty is film photography. Photographers can take multiple pictures and receive them instantly when using digital cameras. Film photography is a longer process. Images are captured on light-sensitive film, and the photos are developed in a dark room.
Landgraf said that's a skill. She immersed herself in black-and-white photography and prefers working in a dark room.
“Photography, compared to other art forms, is probably the most solo art form, and I like that,” she said. “It’s a vehicle or method of trying to tell your story but not to be too intrusive.”
Landgraf's works will be on display at the Whitney Museum until January and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until August.
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