John Nicol Crombie, Commercial Bay from Point Britomart, 1859, albumen silver prints mounted on album page. (PHOTO: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.)
William Meluish, Dunedin, 1861, albumen silver prints, two-part panorama. (PHOTO: Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago)
Lawson Insley, Edward Catchpool, April 1852. (PHOTO: Alexander Turnbull Library, Margaret Dunne collection.)
Richard P. Leitch and unknown colourist, ‘Part of the town and harbour of Dunedin, the capital of Otago — from a photograph recently taken’, 1862, wood engraving, Illustrated London News, 30 August 1862. (PHOTO: Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago.)
Elizabeth Pulman, King Tāwhiao, Tūkāroto Matutaera Pōtatau Te Wherowhero, Ngāti Mahuta, 1882. (PHOTO: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.)
Charles Spencer, Trickling Buttresses, White Terrace, c. 1880s, mammoth-plate collodion silver glass negative, positive and negative views. (PHOTO: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.)
William Temple, The bush at Razorback. Gt South Road New Zealand, 1862–63. (PHOTO: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.)
Photographer unknown, Unknown sitter, c. 1890, crystoleum. (PHOTO: Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum.)
The arrival of photography to New Zealand in 1848 was more about business than art. A cumbersome kit meant photographers needed carriages or horses to lug their gear across unsealed roads to sell their wares.
These early images provide a valuable insight to the country's colonial era, with stunning portraits and landscapes now being presented in a new book entitled A Different Light: First Photographs of Aotearoa.
Susie is joined by Shaun Higgins who, along with fellow book editor Catherine Hammond, has pulled together the extraordinary and extensive photographic collections of three major research libraries - Auckland Museum, Hocken Collections, and Alexander Turnbull Library.
The book is also being celebrated with a travelling exhibition.
