A very early Maori photographic portrait

2020

In New Zealand, daguerrotypes since the 1850s and later on wet-plate photography already had Māori portraiture as an important motif. The 1860s saw a dramatic rise in cartes de visite, and since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, photos and postcards representing Māori men, women and children boomed. Mainly produced by Pākehā (European settler) photographers for a Pākehā audience, these portraits depicted Māori in a stereotypical way which also characterised photography on the Pacific Islands of the time: often propped with emblematic weapons or jewellery, men were staged as fierce warriors, women either as innocent belles or, like men, as very old, often with the allusion of a 'dying race'. New Zealand tourism, especially in the Rotorua area with its thermal attractions, was thriving by the 1890s and brought along a souvenir production which already proved so large and lucrative that it was partly outsourced to companies in Germany. Cartes de visite and postca...

Back Story Journal of New Zealand Art, Media & Design History, 2018

An ambrotype photographic view of Auckland presents one of the earliest extant photographs of the urban landscape in the city. As a rare example of a landscape presented as a cased image it marks an early scenic view that would be repeated in later technology. Identification and supporting evidence dates the cased photograph to circa 1857. Of the photographers working in Auckland at that time two primary candidates for the creation of this work are discussed, Hartley Webster and John Nicol Crombie with the argument that the former is the most likely. Several other photographic views from 1858 to 1859 are shown as examples of known early landscape photographs of Auckland. One in particular shows a wider view taken from a similar point on Constitution Hill looking across to Mechanics Bay and Parnell.

2017

This thesis looks at photography and album culture in Otago, New Zealand, between 1848 when the first Otago settlement colonists arrived and 1890 when snapshot cameras became widely available. It builds on work by Elizabeth Siegel and Martha Langford on nineteenth-century photograph albums, looking at their use as oral devices for self-representation. Additionally, it investigates album culture in a colonial context and situates photography in Otago within broader discussions on nineteenth-century immigration, identity and modernity. A material culture approach, which uses objects as evidence for exploring human behaviour, has been applied to 89 carte de visite and cabinet card albums holding approximately 6,000 photographs in the collection of Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. These have been supplemented by albums and photographs from other collections. This thesis examines in-depth two albums from the 1880s; one compiled by an Otago-born woman of Scottish ancestry and the other owned ...

1993

Abstract The following compilation of historical manuscript and published material relating to the Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines for the approximate period 1770 to 1900 aims to supplement that contained in the author's Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines 1770-1850 (Wollongong University, 1990). The latter was compiled in a relatively short 18 month period between 1988 and 1989, and since then a great deal of new material has been discovered, with more undoubtedly yet to be unearthed of relevance to this study.

The Daguerreian Annual, 2015

The rise of photography in New Zealand is introduced through the study of surviving daguerreotypes. Analysis of known daguerreotypists and their styles along with detailed study of the sitter’s activities enables the categorisation of daguerreotypes made in New Zealand, the first photographs made locally in the colony. As a sample of a wider study, this article introduces examples from the Auckland War Memorial Museum pictorial collections with the hope that further connections regarding the daguerreotypists and their work can be established.

New Zealand Journal of History, 2018

Self-portraits using moko have a relatively short history (1815-1884) within Māori culture, yet they provide many revelations about Māori and how they saw themselves. These took two forms: those which were made on land deeds across the country, and those made on request for Europeans. Examples range from a letter to King William IV in 1831 signed by 13 Ngapuhi chiefs, to a self-portrait by Te Peehi Kupe of Ngāti Toa Rangitira made in Liverpool, England and two drawings by Tuai of his Ngāre Raumati brother Korokoro. I argue here that these drawings should be read as part of a unique system of Māori self-portraiture in which the physiognomic details so critical in Western European traditions of self-portraiture are replaced by complex forms of moko. In doing so, they provide a snapshot into cross-cultural engagement and interaction between Māori and Pākehā, and suggest a deeper level of Māori understanding of such practices than previously thought. That these drawings are regarded as the ancestors by their descendants today is evidence of the enduring power of these tohu.

New Zealand Legacy, 2007

In September 1877 photographer Charles Henry Monkton announced that he had entered into partnership with James Sharp who would shortly be joining him from Melbourne. The venture was not a success and the partnership was dissolved on 15 December barely 3 months after its commencement. But Sharp stayed on in Whanganui building up his photographic business in conjunction with his son Raffaelle. He returned to Australia in March 1881. This paper was first published in New Zealand Legacy in March 2007.

Auckland Museum Records, 2012

Abstract. A new photographer is introduced for the Waikato campaign via the HMS Curacoa. An album of photographs compiled by Montagu Higginson has brought to light many new images and provided links to other images known from a range of existing albums. Other photographers of the period are drawn together by the images found in these albums and Higginson’s previously unknown South Sea Islands album. The evidence shows that trading took place between both photographers and enthusiasts, spreading the photographic record of the Waikato war. Some of this material found its way to England and has now come full circle to return to New Zealand.

The Contemporary Pacific, 2018