Explore Our Image Collections

This collection of posters covers the late 1960s to 70s. There are a wide variety of topics dealing with film, children, travel, architecture, Copernicus, economics, printing, graphics, folklore, archeology, and WWII commemoration. A useful background to Polish posters in general may be found at https://www.illustrationhistory.org/essays/reflecting-the-soul-of-a-nation-polish-poster-art

The central ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, Sicily was constructed and painted between 1140 and 1143, followed by the side aisle ceilings that were completed by 1180. The Norman king Roger II (r. 1130–1154) built the chapel. The Cappella Palatina represents the visual amalgamation of three distinct cultures. It combines a Latin basilica plan with a Byzantine central plan where the domed sanctuary and the walls of the nave and aisles are covered with Byzantine mosaics, but the ceilings of the nave and aisles are distinctly Islamic. Accompanying diagrams indicate the location of the photographs on the ceilings. Click to view the full sized image.

The album contains the passport applications for 165 people who wished to return to their native country. Every person was required to submit a photograph, and details on where they were born and when, what work they did in Russia, year and name of ship on which they came to Hawaii, what work they did here, how many children, and their religion.

The Hindu Gods and Goddesses Collection consists of 35 lithographic prints and 3 typed manuscripts related to Hindu mythology and religious narratives. Created in 1903 by Atul K. Basu, the collection includes visual and textual representations of Hindu gods, goddesses, and religious figures. The manuscripts contain mythological narratives, devotional interpretations, religious symbolism, and descriptions of ritual traditions associated with Hindu beliefs and practices. Together, the lithographs and manuscripts reflect Hindu mythological themes and religious expression within South Asian print and textual culture. The collection may support research in Hindu mythology, South Asian religious…

Douglas Oliver (Feb. 10, 1913 - October 30, 2009) completed a B.A. at Harvard in 1934 and and a DPhil in Ethnology at the University of Vienna in 1935. Between 1936 and 1941, he was a research associate on the staff of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Ethnology and Archaeology. Between 1938 and 1939, Oliver conducted research on Bougainville, among the Siwai (a.k.a. Siuai) people. The majority of these images derive from that period, and were donated to the Pacific Collection following Dr. Oliver's death in 2009.Image Courtesy Wikimedia CommonsRelated Information:Association for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Winter 1990 "Douglas L. Oliver, 1913-2009"

The images contained in this online collection are digital reproductions of materials in several distinct art and photograph collections, covering a range of geographic regions and time periods. Taken as a whole, these collections document many facets of life in the Pacific during World War II, from the brutal and the tragic to the mundane.A note about photo captioning: In cases where images had previously been captioned, either by their creators or by the various agencies that produced the images, those captions have been reproduced verbatim on this site. In some cases, this text is offensive to modern sensibilities; however, it is preserved here for historical purposes.Commercial use of…

Unpublished drawings by Jean Charlot originally created for Paul Claudel's A Travers les Vitraux de Apocalypse and related textual materials held by the Jean Charlot Collection, University of Hawai'i Library.Drawings are described by the chapter and page numbers written on the original source. Paul Claudel and Jean Charlot met in 1928 and collaborated on many published projects. However, the largest project they planned has remained unpublished: an illustrated version of Claudel's A Travers des Vitraux de Apocalypse. Claudel sketched and described the illustrations he wanted, and Charlot acted as a kind of artistic medium to realize them. The drawings are, therefore, a unique witness to the…

The Joseph Singer Collection is comprised of a sampling of the artist's black and white photographs and prints documenting many of Hawaiʻi's sacred places and a sampling of his experimental prints. Some of the works are alternate views of images for his book with Jan Becket.Joseph M. Singer (1918-2010) was born in Pittsburgh and earned chemistry and chemical engineering degrees at the University of Pittsburgh. He made a career with the U.S. Bureau of Mines and moved to Hawaiʻi in the early 1980s when he retired. In his undergraduate days, he also studied drawing and photography, with some of his work shown in exhibitions. He rekindled his interest in art at the University of Hawaiʻi when…

Henry P. Edmunds and William A. Bryan were both photographers of the early 20th century. Although they lived very different lives, they shared the experience of Rapanui, or Easter Island, during the early 1900s. Each took remarkable photographs documenting Rapanui's archaeological wonders and everyday life, several of which are presented here.For more information about the photographers, the provenance of this collection click here.  A glossary is also available.In addition to the University of Hawai'i Library's holdings, Honolulu's Bishop Museum also has an extensive collection of Henry P. Edmunds' photographs.

As a longtime collaborator with Helen Merritt, a Japanese art scholar at Northern Illinois University, Nanako Yamada developed her passion and expertise in the artworks of Kuchi-e woodblock prints, created during the Meiji and Taishō eras in Japan. For her research, she collected more than 200 prints and dozens of monographs that originally contained these prints. In spring 2024, UH Hamilton Library proudly received her entire collection for further research and education in art and literary disciplines on campus. In accordance with Yamada’s request to study Kuchi-e prints as an integral part of literature in early 20th century Japan, this project aims to explore available resources and…