October 09, 2021 through November 10, 2021

Jan Becket • Pana Oʻahu

Opening on October 9th

LightBox Photographic Gallery opens Pana Oʻahu, an Exhibit of prints from large format film negatives exposed on the Island of Oahu in the 1990’s by Photographer Jan Becket. These prints help preserve to the historical record images of cultural and sacred sites on the Island. The LightBox directors spent years the Islands until 1996, the images in the Exhibit are, in their mind, of a special place and time, and an incredible accomplishment by the photographer.

An exhibit of 24 images from the book Pana Oʻahu: Sacred Stones, Sacred Land (University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999). Two photographers contributed work to the book: Joe Singer and Jan Becket. This exhibit consists of images in the book by Jan Becket. Joe Singer has since passed away. The book won the Samuel Kamakau Award for best Hawaiʻi book of the year and several Palapala Awards for best photographic book and best book design. Images are of heiau, Hawaiian ceremonial temples and smaller shrines of the makaʻāinana, the common people. There had been a survey of these sites on Oʻahu in the early 1930s by one man, and another partial survey in the early 1950s but nothing since. Often, people living near them had no idea they existed. Thus, in those pre-GPS times, with vague maps, our primary effort was to locate the places. We visited 140 ceremonial sites on Oʻahu, some of which were unrecorded. A few no longer exist, having been sacrificed to development. It took us 12 years to create the images in this book. All images were made on 4X5 black and white film. Images in this exhibit are from those scanned negatives, printed on Moab Juniper.

~ Jan Becket – September, 2021

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