Sixty years ago, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain (29 May 1953) The two men’s mountaineering triumph came just a few days before Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. Their feat boosted the rejoicing that was already takingRead more
To mark Anzac Day tomorrow, here is an update on our ‘Kiwi Faces of World War I’ soldier identficiation project. We now identified more than 60 men out of the 110 World War One soldiers who were photographed by the Wellington photography studio Berry & Co. Most of these identificationsRead more
Last week, along with 15 other people from museums and galleries around New Zealand who work with photographic collections, I attended a course on the care and identification of photographic prints and negatives. The course was taken by Gawain Weaver, a photographic conservator from San Francisco and he also gaveRead more
So here are the mysteries that remain unsolved – if you can help please use the comment section at the end of this post. 1) mystery beach… 2) we know that it is not Olveston, Bishop’s Court or Columba College… 3) North Island? 4) Small North Island town… 5) 19th century South Island factory… 6)Read more
Here are images we know more about but are yet to be positively identified. If you can confirm or deny any of these locations please use the comment section at the end of this post. 1) Mangere Bridge, South Auckland? 2) Kaiteriteri area – Little Kaiteriteri? 3) Greytown? 4) ‘Elvington’, Oamaru. Residence ofRead more
Many of you have been helping identify the locations and places in some of the mystery photographs in Te Papa’s collection. It has been very enjoyable hearing from people, checking the information offered and updating the results on the database. All the images in this post have been identified by the publicRead more
A team from the Discovery Centres recently spent nine Wednesday afternoons together with nine awesome tamariki (children) in a trial run of Te Papa’s first after school club. Through the after school club we wanted to learn, together with the tamariki, about the stories Te Papa tells. We also wantedRead more
For me the new year is an opportunity to stop for a moment and reflect on the achievements of the past year. Today my focus has been on Te Papa’s Kiwi Faces of World War I project where we have been identifying soldiers in a collection of negatives taken atRead more
Movember is drawing to a close, and thousands of men in New Zealand and around the world are sporting moustaches for a good cause. In New Zealand, the funds raised are being used for research, advocacy and survivor support around men’s cancer and mental health. Here’s a small selection ofRead more
Brian Brake grew up in Arthur’s Pass and retained a love of New Zealand’s mountains all his life. He took hundreds of photographs of South Island peaks, lakes and rivers. If you’re an alpine enthusiast, a keen tramper, or you know the South Island well, please take a look andRead more
Te Papa has a collection of nearly 4,000 glass plate and film negatives taken by the Wellington photography studio Berry & Co. The studio was founded by William Berry in 1897, and operated in Cuba St until 1931. The negatives are mainly portraits – of families, children, men and women,Read more
It is not often I come across early photographs that capture pure joy like this one does. Too young to find the serious appeals of the photographer’s command to “keep still” anything other than funny, this infant boy’s laughter dominates the image and projects a good sense of fun aboutRead more
One of the fascinating aspects of the Berry & Co photographs of World War I soldiers is that they were often photographed with family and friends. These family photographs bring to the fore the fact that women and children were affected by the war. Life on the home front wasRead more
Te Papa has an enormous collection of photographs, negatives and transparencies by Brian Brake (1927 – 88), one of New Zealand’s best known photographers. Brake became famous while working overseas as a photojournalist – one of his best known works is the Monsoon photo essay, which he took in 1960. Read more
