Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books. 

“A DIFFERENT LIGHT – First Photographs of Aotearoa” Edited by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins (Auckland University Press, NZ$60)

 

 

In the 21^st century, we take photographs for granted. Casually walking down the street, we whip out our pocket-sized phones when we see something interesting and in a split-second we take a shot. In fact in a few seconds we can take dozens of shots. It’s as easy as opening the fridge, starting the car, using the micro-wave or pressing the remote to watch something on television. But it wasn’t always like his. For nearly all of the nineteenth century, after the two French scientists Nicephore Niepce and Louis Daguerre invented the first photographs, taking a photograph was largely a laborious affair. You had to have heavy equipment, difficult to take out of the studio. The shutter of your camera worked slowly, making it hard to capture moving objects without producing blurred images. You had to mix your own chemicals, necessary for fixing the image. In fact to be a photographer you had to be either a professional photographer or a very dedicated (and wealthy) amateur.

A Different Light – First Photographs of Aotearoa charts and celebrates 19^th century photographers in New Zealand. As an aesthetic object, A Different Light is a beautiful piece of work – a sturdy hardback, its cover olive-coloured; a lavish selection of images in the essays; and pages dedicated to images alone, often mounted as if they are from somebody’s album, with the ancient images framed in black. If you first wander through the many images, you soon get used to the sepia colours of most photos until, in photos taken near the end of the 19th century, photos suddenly become sturdily black-and-white. There were also a few attempts at producing colour in the form of painting details over photographs. You also have that alluring oddity where, in outdoor photographs, the skies are blank and empty, like a white sheet – because cameras could not then register the blue of the sky or the lighter clouds.

A Different Light is based on photographs from the collections of the Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Alexander Turnbull Library (Wellington) and the Hocken Collections (Dunedin), with a preface from each of these establishments. Angela Wanhalla’s introduction “Photography and Settlers Colonialism” points out that, apparently, the first photos taken in New Zealand were in 1848, not too long after the Treaty of Waitangi… but those photos are now lost. She is also aware that commercial photography then was often “aligned with propaganda”, with photographers producing images of happy immigrants settled in New Zealand or attractive landscapes to lure more immigrants. Soldiers and surveyors often photographed Maori and it is possible that there were some Maori photographers. Some Maori liked portraits, especially with the aim to keep the memory of those who had died. But others shunned photography completely. Te Whiti and Tohu Kakahi, the prophets of Parihaka, saw photography as the theft of one’s image.

Shaun Higgins’ essay “Chasing Wonder – Photography in the Auckland Province” is very interested in the way photography developed technically. The daguerreotype was the “first widely used photographic technology” and in 1848 two photographers were advertising  their services in Auckland. In 1850 an itinerate photographer advertised “Daguerreotypes and Talbotypes” referring to the form of photography pioneered by the English chemist Fox Talbot. Gradually the daguerreotype was overtaken by the “ambertype”. More as a cheap sideshow novelty was the tintype. Collodian silver print made for much more precise images. Only much later, in the 1880s and 1890s, did fast-moving shutters bring about the snap-shot, allowing for clear images of movement. Shaun Higgins notes some pioneers in the Auckland region, such as the Anglican clergyman John Kinder who was one of the first in New Zealand to produce stereoscopes – two photos together giving the effect of 3-D perspective. Higgins also notes that “In both Pakeha and Maori societies, photographs embody a tangible trace and essence of subject that are as integral to their cultural meaning as that of photographs as status in Victorian society.” Maori gradually embraced photography.

Paul Diamond’s essay “Once Were Traders – Reading Images of Maori in the ‘Urquhart Album’ ” begins with a gathering of about 24 Maori photographed by William Temple in the bush near Pokino (or Pokeno) before the British invasion of Waikato in 1862. Diamond’s basic thesis is that, before the invasion, Maori were thriving entrepreneurs, cultivating lands and selling fruit and vegetables – in effect provisioning Pakeha Auckland. This is a case of an historical image verifying what has long been suspected.

Anna Petersen’s essay “The Give and Take of Photographs – Early Views of Dunedin and Otago” examines in detail those, such as the photographers William Meluish and Joseph Perry, who set up their businesses in the 1850s. As always, many of their images were used to encourage immigration. Idealising old Dunedin there is a fascinating panoramic photo of central Dunedin in 1860, and then the same image as rendered in lithograph by the Illustrated London News, and inevitably glamourising the original. Once the Otago gold rush was on, there were propagandist photos suggesting that gold was for the picking in Gabrial’s Gully and besides, there were few Maori in the region to worry about. Picturesque photographic images were required for the New Zealand Exhibition in Dunedin in 1865 and it was Joseph Perry who was the man to shoot beaches and mountains and especially romantic places like Wanaka… though some of his images of mountains are downright daunting. Surprisingly, Anna Petersen mentions only in passing the well-known Burton Brothers whose photographs have often been cited in history books – but she sees their fame as coming mainly from their astute advertising.

Natalie Marshall’s essay “Camera Fiends and Snapshooters – Early Amateur Photography in Aotearoa” brings us up to the 1890s when it became easier to obtain a camera and easier to use one. She focuses on three Wellington amateurs, James Coutts Cranford, Henry Charles Clarke Wright, and Robina Nicol. Moving away from studio depictions of people, Cranford photographed people out of doors as often as indoors, presenting a more natural way of seeing people. There is a photo of his wife’s crinoline being battered by the Wellington wind, causing her crinoline to appear in the photo as a blur. Cranford’s photos were often shot, realistically, around his house and suburb in Thorndon. Henry Charles Clarke Wright was a very questionable man to say the least. Four times married, twice divorced, and rigidly opposed to women’s suffrage, as well as very questionably photographing bare-breasted wahine, Wright was nevertheless a very skilled photographer, chronicling early Marama and Newton, as well as bird reserves. His images are sharp and clear – one of the greatest photos in this volume being his image of a bullock-cart being driven through what would later be a suburb. And then there is  the most prolific of the Wellington amateur photographers, Robina Nicol, who mostly photo’d women, children, church activities and scenes of Wellington, Whanganui and Rotorua. Marshall’s essay sees Nicol as a very domestic photographer who saw the little things in ordinary life that others overlooked, and who [intentionally or not] made clear the niceties of social class in those days.

By the time Robina Nicol was shooting her photos, Kodak had come along with small cameras which were advertised with the slogan “You press the button – we do the rest.” People no longer had to mix their own chemicals and go through most of the difficulties of producing a photo. This was also in the age [the 1890s] where there were now split-second shutters, meaning that photos could catch very swift movements. Gone were the sylvan scenes where a waterfall [there is one in this book] where the falling water looks like blurred candyfloss rather than water. This was also the age when there were “snapshooters” who could wander around at random clicking away with their Kodaks.

 

There is much discussion in A Different Light about the stiffness of early studio photograph portraits – sitters has to keep still in a pose as shutters were slow. There is much discussion on how photography was accepted. But in the end, one is drawn to the ancient  photographs themselves. Look at the various versions of the portrait of the Maori King Tawhiao. Look at Bruno Hamel’s [first ever] photos of the Pink and White Terraces and then look at later photos of the same area after Tarawera exploded. Consider the meaning of a British soldier changing clothes with a Maori “scout”. Look at small settlements emerging, at empty farmlands, at [for their day] grand buildings … and much more that the eye can take in.

FOOTNOTE: At the time of writing this review, an exhibition of images related to A Different Light – First Photographs of Aotearoa is on display in the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The exhibition will then be taken to other parts of the country, especially Wellington and Dunedin. Well worth seeing.