Rare photos from early NZ history

Joseph Perry’s 1865 The Natural Bridge on the Kawarau, [albumen silver print] from the Hocken Collections is on display now in the exhibition "A Different Light: First photographs of Aotearoa" at the Hocken. Image: supplied

The exhibition, "A Different Light: First photographs of Aotearoa", which presents a selection of the earliest photographs produced in New Zealand, dating from the 1850s-1900s, will be on display until February

Tracing the rapid development of photography, from daguerreotypes made in the late 1840s to the cartes de visite of the 1860s and the emergence of amateur photography in the 1880s, the exhibition has been years in the making.

A collaboration between The Hocken, Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Alexander Turnbull Library/National Library Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, the exhibition features photographs from all three collections.

Hocken photography curator Dr Anna Petersen said, in a statement, "A Different Light: First photographs of Aotearoa" provided a rare opportunity to view some of Aotearoa New Zealand's original earliest photographs from three key institutions.

"Some of the photographs have most likely never been exhibited before," she said.

Three curators, Shaun Higgins, Natalie Marshall and Dr Petersen — one from each partner institution — faced the challenge of confining the selection of photographs to roughly 35 items each.

Dr Petersen said The Hocken display included 33 extra local photos, from its own collection, for the benefit of the Dunedin audience.

"I am excited to see how good the exhibition is looking in the Hocken Gallery and pleased to have had the opportunity to add photographs that bring out the particular aesthetic of early photography, due in part to the technological limitations and materials and processes used," she said.

One Otago photograph displayed is of a Kawarau Gorge rock formation that no longer exists.

The natural bridge was used by early Māori as a crossing point to and from the West Coast and was also used by early European explorers and goldminers during the 1860s, Dr Petersen said. 

The Natural Bridge on the Kawarau, taken by Joseph Perry in 1865, includes a small group of miners near the bottom with a couple of manuka poles suspended a little way up.

"When the river was high, the miners would carry their provisions across by walking on the lower stick and holding on to the upper one," Dr Petersen said.

The photo was commissioned by geologist James Hector as part of a photographic survey of Otago for display at the first New Zealand Exhibition held in Dunedin in 1865.