Anton BRUEHL
Australia 1900 – United States of America 1982
United States from 1919

Light hearts make buoyant riding over the surf at Waikiki 1939
half tone
image 31.8 (h) x 25.0 (w) cm

From the late 1930s the Matson Line employed well-known photographers, such as Edward Steichen and Anton Bruehl, to promote the idea of Hawaii as a tourist paradise. The brief was to glamorise the voyage, the islands and the ‘exotic’ locals. Bruehl created a vibrant illusion of tropical outdoor life in a series of colour advertisements featuring beautiful women as tourists, as well as exotic Hawaiian models. The campaign was shot in his New York studio on Lexington Avenue.

From early in the twentieth century through to 1970 the Matson Line ships sailed from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Honolulu, the South Pacific, New Zealand and Australia. Originally a cargo carrier, the company developed passenger services in the 1920s. The famed ‘white ships of the Matson Line’, the Mariposa and the Monterey, served the Australian route.