Did you know that there were a lot of women photographers in Aotearoa New Zealand before 1960? To mark this year’s International Women’s Day tomorrow, and its theme ‘inspire inclusion’, Photography Curator Lissa Mitchell introduces some of them and their stories.

So what kind of photography did women make?

For over 160 years women in Aotearoa have had access to photographic equipment and used it in all sorts of ways making images in just about every style and subject you can think of.

Eva Wardrop (nee Innes) utilised her art skills to supplement her family income by working from home hand colouring photographic portraits for The Nevill Studio in Dunedin.

Eila Bristow and Elsa Mawley trained and formed their own studio partnership in London in 1931 under the guidance of the acclaimed British photographer Dorothy Wilding, before returning to Wellington and opening their studio, Bristow Mawley.

So when did women start taking photographs in Aotearoa New Zealand?

Women have been involved in the making of photography from its earliest years. Currently, the earliest known women photographer working in Aotearoa New Zealand is Jane Smith who had her own studio in Christchurch by 1865 and was probably involved in a studio with her husband (prior to his move into plumbing) from May 1860.

Eliza Leaf operated a successful photography studio in England before emigrating in 1862. In Auckland, she continued to work supporting her son Robert to establish a studio, which was described in a local newspaper at the time as ‘a great eyesore’. Unlike other women photographers, Leaf’s husband was not a photographer, and she pursued the work herself and probably taught Robert the business.

Martha Houdin is recorded working as a photographer in New Plymouth from 1864. Like many women, Houdin appears to have taken up photography after her husband became unwell and seems to have stopped working when she remarried.

Were there any early Māori photographers?

Many of the early Māori photographers were wahine. Kuini Wi Rangipupu (Ngāti Ruanui) is a Māori woman whose photography enterprise remains elusive despite being on record as running a studio in Rotorua in 1891.

Further north, Katarina Hansard (nee Īhāia, Ngāpuhi), assisted by her daughter Aneta Hansard (Ngāpuhi), operated a studio in the town of Kaikohe from 1892. As well as studio portraiture Katrina also took views of the land of her people, copies of which only survive today through reproduction.

Photographers such as Katarina and Aneta undermine assumptions that Māori became involved with photography only as the subjects of ethnographic imagery.

Where were these women photographers?

Woman photographers were all around the motu. From Katarina and Aneta Hansard in Northland to Mary Donnan, a schoolteacher and amateur photographer, in Otautau in the far south. With few professional photographers in the area, Donnan’s photographic archive provides the most complete record in rural Southland.

Anna Spencer assisted the naturalist Herbert Guthrie-Smith with photographing birds. In 1923 Spencer was a photographer on Guthrie-Smith’s expedition to photograph the now-extinct tutukiwi | South Island snipe on Taukihepa | Big South Cape Island (south of Stewart Island).

Spencer’s own written account of the trip details her role in taking and processing photographs while camping on a remote island and her diaries record the development of photographic prints in the evenings on her return home. In 1927 Spencer travelled again as a photographer for Guthrie-Smith on an expedition to the Sub-Antarctic Islands – Snares, Bounty, and Antipodes.

Want to know more?

Check out the book Through Shaded Glass – women and photography in Aotearoa New Zealand 1860 to 1960

Also this article by UK based photographic historian, Rose Teanby, Through Camille Silvy’s Lens: A Focus on Seven Pioneering Women Photographers

#inspireinclusion #IWD2024