Mark of spirit and culture

For today's wahine, such as Waitiahoaho Te Ruki of Ngati Maniapoto, the wearing of moko links them to their kuia (elders).

Outsiders' romance with and seizure of moko design and imagery have been demonstrated in their publication in postcards and popular culture since the initial presentation of Parkinson, Hodges, Earle and Angas' respective portfolios to a curious world. Throughout the 19th century, the appearance in London and other urban centres of men like Te Peehi Kupe, Titore and Waikato, followed by heavily tattooed British eccentrics Rutherford and Burns, and visiting groups of exotic Maori entertainers, all reinforced this fascination.

Itinerant and studio photographers contributed to the large collection of visual images. John Nichol Crombie arrived in Auckland in 1856, attended some important Maori and missionary gatherings, and by 1861 had images in the Illustrated London News.

He also offered them a set of 12 daguerreotypes of important chiefs, and his work was the foundation for some of Goldie's portraits.

The world of the Maori was still largely rural and unseen by most European settlers, and thus the romantic myth of traditional Maori life could be enthusiastically promoted, with fierce warriors, dusky maidens, domesticated moa and swaying tree ferns appearing in literature, poetry and music.

Images of people with moko featured not only in tourist marketing of the exotic, but also in brazenly commercial advertisements, and this caused considerable concern for an increasingly beleaguered people. In one instance, the flagrant use of the portrait of a major 19th century Maori leader on a petrol pump caused grief and resentment, but those feelings remained on the marae. Another was the character jug Maori piloted in 1939 by Royal Doulton, but never mass produced because of the outbreak of war.

The inappropriate association of moko with certain ideas or objects or behaviours diminished the mana of the taonga itself, and the mana of the wearer; this incurred the risk of illness or injury, even death. As King summarises, [this was] even more likely if photographic images appeared on articles that were themselves profane in Maori terms, especially those associated with food: tea towels, biscuit tins, table mats, dining-room walls. Such juxtapositions constituted obscenities in Maori terms.

There was the additional complication that the most appealing candidates for commercial photography were often men and women with moko - and the subjects themselves regarded moko as their most tapu feature, as the thing about themselves that should be least exposed to a commercial transaction.

Moko, people with moko, thus defined what New Zealand once thought itself to be; the settlers and the supposedly subdued but colourful natives whose strong visual singularity was emphasised in the evolution of this country's popular culture.