Published to accompany the an exhibition of the same name at Te Uru, A Study of a Samoan Savage responds, in part, to the recent problematic treatment of Polynesian men as powerful but primitive players in Rugby culture. Large format photographs and a life-size projection are displayed alongside rare archives to critique the historical and ongoing fetishizing of Samoan men as athletic specimens. Using a sequential photographic process, Kihara subverts the anthropological impulses that objectify, exoticize and eroticise the Pacific male body. The publication includes specially commissioned essays that explore the history of anthropology, anthropometry, photography, colonisation and sporting culture.

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