Identified Pierce Photos
These photos were identified thanks to the efforts of the community and the Hawaii Tribune Herald. If you feel that a subject or location has been misidentified or a name has been misspelled, please call the Lyman Museum at 935-5021 or email Eric at archives@lymanmuseum.org.
Un-Identified Pierce Photos
Below are photographs we invite you to help us identify. If you have any information, please contact the archivist at 808-935-5021 or by email.
About the Pierce Photo ID Project
The John Howard Pierce Photograph Collection was acquired by the Museum in 2007. It contains Mr. Pierce’s surviving body of work—tens of thousands of photographic prints and negatives taken from the time he began work at the Hawaii Tribune-Herald in 1951 through the early 1970s (beyond his retirement from both the paper and the Lyman Museum).
The collection’s significance lies in the years covered and the variety of subjects captured. As the Museum Archives slowly goes through the collection, what becomes evident is that during an historically important period of tremendous growth and change—those years before and after statehood—Pierce and his camera bore witness to nearly all forms of community activity conducted here.
It is this expansive and comprehensive view of Hawai‘i Island that makes the collection an invaluable contribution not only to our community’s story, but to the State’s historical record.
Almost none of the images in the collection have any information beyond date, if that. The Pierce Photo Identification Project is an ongoing effort to recruit help from the community to solve these mysteries. This Photo ID Project is only one part of an archival process that involves making the images accessible, recruiting the help of the community to describe the images, and ultimately, sharing the images with the larger public.
John Howard Pierce
Nani Pierce
Emily Pierce–Hilo Union School– Kindergarten class 10/11/1965
