It is an unusual thing as any researcher can tell, to feel you know a place with great familiarity through in-depth reading and research but when visiting that place for real, find that no amount of reading will ever compensate for actually standing there in person. That’s the reaction IRead more
Last night was a great night for us as Pete Cronshaw of TV One’s Sunday programme dedicated a full half hour to Te Papa’s ‘Berry Boys’ identification project. If you missed the programme, or would like to view it again you can watch it here online. As Pete Cronshaw explained, Te Papa’s History Team have beenRead more
Lately I’ve spent a lot of time researching the soldiers that were part of WW1’s 1st Māori Contingent. In a letter sent back home, Lieutenant Henare Kohere who was in the 2nd Māori Contingent, spoke about arriving in Egypt and being welcomed by the remainder of the first. When weRead more
100 years ago HMS New Zealand arrives in New Zealand (12 April 1913) In March 1909, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward announced that ‘the Dominion’ (New Zealand) was offering ‘the Motherland’ (Britain) the ‘free gift of … a first-class battleship’. The Prime Minister thought that his offer toRead 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
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
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
98 years ago New Zealand troops land at Apia, German Samoa (29 August 1914) Ten days after New Zealand entered the war in Europe, it sent troops to occupy German Samoa. This force of almost 1400 men was specifically charged with seizing the colony’s wireless transmitter. The troops that landed atRead more
One of the amazing things about researching the Berry and Co portraits is that with each identification comes new insight into World War 1. The stories behind the people and their experiences make what happened during the war more real and personal. One image in particular pulled at my heart-stringsRead more
The public interest following last month’s blog post was immense and extremely heart-warming. The reaction was helped along by an article in The Dominion Post on the 5 June entitled ‘Positive search via war negatives’ and an interview with Jim Mora on Radio New Zealand National. The emails, phone callsRead more
Te Papa has a wonderful collection of 172 portraits on glass plate negatives featuring World War One soldiers. These images were taken at the Berry & Co. photography studio in Wellington between about 1914 and 1919. The men in these images were about to enter into a life-changing event. Some wouldRead more
During my time as intern at Te Papa, I have been working to try to discover the identities of the sitters who appear in a collection of photographic portraits held in the museum’s collection. The portraits depict soldiers who had their photographs taken at the studio of Berry & Co.Read more
During my internship with the Te Papa History Team, I have been working to try to identify the sitters who appear in a number of photographic portraits which are held in the museum’s collection. Using military personnel files, databases and online resources I have tried to discover more information aboutRead more
In my work as an intern with the History Department here at Te Papa, one of the objects I’ve had the opportunity to work on is a memorial banner commemorating New Zealand soldiers from the First World War. I have been working to add more detail to the museum’s recordsRead more
As an intern with the History Department at Te Papa, I have been given the challenging task of researching the sitters who appear in a number of photographic portraits held in the collection. Looking closely at some of the pictures, it seems that the images contained on the museum’s glassRead more
