With the invention of photography, Tahiti came to play an important role of preservation; the image of "Modern Man" is reflected in the mirror of a society at the time considered archaic, with regard to finding his original roots. 

The Maori becomes "the negative" of the West, and the concept of the island, an isolated and closed world, strongly symbolic, amplifies this perception. 

Travellers in Polynesia often witness a feeling of perfection, a state of merger with the environment; the perfection of a primitive life in complete communion with nature, returning to the origins, will in itself constitute enough elements for finding the lost happiness of childhood. 

The first photographic proofs from Tahiti and the Marquesa Islands are extremely rare. Located away from the beaten maritime routes and communication, this media of expression came late to Polynesia. 

As colonial life little by little became organized, western photographers, including Henri Lemasson,  established their studios to be visited by both the western establishment and the original islanders, and the local women often got a "career" as models. 

The French painter Paul Gauguin was inspired by one of these proofs, and met finally Henri Lemasson, whose photographs often became the models for the painter.