Who was Jutta Merensky? In search of a German photographer of the Pacific.

This article focuses on the photographic collection of Jutta Merensky (later Jutta Gethen, 1911–1996), a German photographer whose work in the Pacific during the 1960s was donated to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), Cambridge, in 2010. The collection includes several hundred transparencies and prints depicting landscapes, ceremonies, and daily life in Aotearoa New Zealand, Samoa, French Polynesia, and other Pacific locations, notably featuring a rare sequence of Samoan tatau (tattooing) photographs. Merensky’s life and career remain partially undocumented, but archival research reveals her multilingual background, travels in the Pacific, and connections to South Africa and Germany. The photographs provide unique visual insights into Pacific cultures during the 1960s, highlighting aspects often absent from other archives, and the collection invites further scholarly investigation.