A Different Light First Photographs of Aotearoa

In 1848, two decades after a French inventor mixed daylight with a cocktail of chemicals to fix the view outside his window onto a metal plate, photography arrived in Aotearoa. How did these ‘portraits in a machine’ reveal Maori and Pakeha to themselves and to each other? Were the first photographs ‘a good likeness’ or were they tricksters? What stories do they capture of the changing landscape of Aotearoa? From horses laden with mammoth photographic plates in the 1870s to the arrival of the Kodak in the late 1880s, New Zealand’s first photographs reveal Kingi and governors, geysers and slums, battles and parties. They freeze faces in formal studio portraits and stumble into the intimacy of backyards, gardens and homes. A Different Light brings together the extraordinary and extensive photographic collections of three major research libraries – Tamaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, Alexander Turnbull Library and Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hakena – to coincide with a touring exhibition of some of the earliest known photographs of Aotearoa. Mau he kamera! Mau he kamera! Ma tatou he kamera!

In 1848, two decades after a French inventor mixed daylight with a cocktail of chemicals to fix the view outside his window onto a metal plate, photography arrived in Aotearoa. How did these ‘portraits in a machine’ reveal Maori and Pakeha to themselves and to each other? Were the first photographs ‘a good likeness’ or were they tricksters? What stories do they capture of the changing landscape of Aotearoa? From horses laden with mammoth photographic plates in the 1870s to the arrival of the Kodak in the late 1880s, New Zealand’s first photographs reveal Kingi and governors, geysers and slums, battles and parties. They freeze faces in formal studio portraits and stumble into the intimacy of backyards, gardens and homes. A Different Light brings together the extraordinary and extensive photographic collections of three major research libraries – Tamaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum, Alexander Turnbull Library and Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hakena – to coincide with a touring exhibition of some of the earliest known photographs of Aotearoa. Mau he kamera! Mau he kamera! Ma tatou he kamera!