Early Canterbury shows its face

Press, 10 March 1988, Page 14

Early Canterbury shows its face

by

STAN DARLING

It is 1866. A two-wheeled covered wagon stands ready in the yard of an urban homestead on the present-day site of Noahs Hotel. Three brothers stand somewhat stiffly in the yard, also ready for a three-day journey south from Christchurch to their Ohapi Farm near Geraldine. . They are Dick. Arthur and Sam, sons of Dr A. C. Barker, the early Canterbury photographer. They are looking out from one of more than a thousand photographs of Dr Barker’s, that Canterbury Museum has managed to collect over the years. Dr Barker’s work has become familiar because he was the most prolific recorder of life on film in the new settlement, but he had more than a hundred picture-taking colleagues in this part of New Zealand. Joan Woodward, the museum’s curator of pictures, has brought together some 130 photographs — from a range of 2000 or so — in a new book, “A Canterbury Album.” The Barker brothers’ picture is on the book’s cover. Thej project had been on Joan Woodward's mind for many of the I7j years she has spent at the museum, where she started working as a volunteer in the library. She has been actively collecting material for about six years j for a book about collodion photography (the wet-plate method) here from 1857 to 1880. The other provinces already have jbooks covering this photographic era, Joan Woodward says. Her project was given a boost by the visit of an antiquarian book and map dealer from England n 1982. “He showed up one day and had a collection of photographs he didn't know anything about but that they were taken in Christchurch,” she says.

turned out to be the work of James Elsbee, who was active in Canterbury photography off and on from 1858 to 1867.

“That added a great number of photographs not by Barker,” says Mrs Woodward, “and we have others of high quality and equally as important.” She says that does not downgrade the work of Dr Barker, who, j as an amateur photographer not bound by business

commissions, was freelto record a wide variety of situations and scenes — “anything he felt like taking.” Collodion photography refers to the agent used to bind lightsensitive nitrate jo the \ glass of a photographic platen ■ Use of the new method began here in 1857 and ended when the dry-plate method became the new technology. Wet plates had been invented overseas in 1851 and were in general I use from 1855. ) It was the first practical way to obtain a negative so (that many prints could be made of one shot.

Joan! Woodward's book emphasises pictures taken outdoors, partly | to show the j wet-plate method’s diversity, (but also to allow us a glimpse of life in those days. ll'"Canterbury will now be able to look itself straight in the face!” i said an 18571 editorial in the "Lyttelton Times.”! Because a wet plate! had to be processed in a short’time, before the emulsion dried.) outdoor photographers had ’to carry their darkrooms with them, either in wagons or tents, j ’

Because of long exposure times, things moving quickly enough across the camera’s view escaped being captured in the print. Slow-moving Jthings could become a blur in the photograph. Joan Woodward | remembers seeing a photo, for example, that shows the body of a i horse but not its legs, which weJe moving quickly enough across the view to remain unseen in the photograph. Objects had toj be in the view long enough, to! be registered on the emulsion'.

“Any slow-moving object would appear as a ghostly blur,” says her book. "Thus, many early street scenes) have a deserted air, perhaps also because the photographer would prefer to work when there was little traffic." I

Dr Barker dated I most of his photographs, and he would jot down information! on when he took them. Many ’were done in the mornings. I | I

Mrs Woodward says that only a few early Canterbury photographers have left enough of their work to allow us to know them from it.

“You get to’ know the Barker family very 'well. For some, there are only two or three samples of their photos.” |

Some shots in the book have been enlarged from the cartel de visite (visiting card) size. Because many pictures that size could be done on one it was a cheaper way of producing photographs. One problem these days is producing a clear enough enlargement of historically-interest-ing photographs from that size. ! The general public is usually not allowed to handle original photographs in the museu-m’s collection, but they can be mpde available to students of photography. '! ! One way of protecting them, aside from proper storage,] is placing them inside inert plastic covers.

Archivists can prevent the spread of foxing, I a form of fungus, on a paper backing of a photograph. That condition can be caused by oad storage or old Victorian paper and glue. “It’s sort pf old-age spots, really,” says I Mrs! Woodward. Treatment does not remove what is already thdre, but it stops it from getting worse.! The museum frequently makes copies of old photographs in albums whose owners do not want to give | them I up. Quite a few photographs are broughi in from houses ! which are being cleaned out. ! The most recent album copied

was of Depression era Canterbury, “and we don’t have many photos of that particular time. They are always in demand.”

"We are collecting actively right up to date,” says Mrs Woodward. “We tell people that any photo the minute it is taken becomes historic.”

A building might be photographed one day and demolished the next, especially in these days of quick site clearance.

"We are always adding to the knowledge of the early photographers,” she says. “After 1880, we just collect the information as it comes, but we haven’t done actual research as such — yet.” "A Canterbury Album” shows that no work from the short photographic career of James McCardell, Canterbury’s first recorded photographer,’ has come to light. A studio portrait of him, taken by early photographer Christopher Swinbourne, has survived. Benjamin Mountfort, the Canterbury architect who arrived in 1850 on the Charlotte Jane (on which Dr Barker was the ship’s surgeon) had an interest in photography. During a hiatus in his architectural career, he had a book and stationery shop and advertised in 1857 that he could take portraits by the! new collodion method. Mountford actually taught the method to Dr Barker. His original photographic prints at Canterbury Museum are mainly views of Little River which show Coop's sawmill and bush-felling work. Joan Woodward notes in her book that "surveyors, architects, explorers and scientists used photography as an accessory to their professions, reflecting their own interests and enthusiasms.” She writes that Mountfort's Little River photos were “no doubt taken when he was there to choose timbers and supervise their transport to Christchurch for the buildings he was designing.” James Elsbee, whose photographs showed up, with the English dealer, had a \ short-lived Christchurch business, then returned to the city from England in 1862 to start another one. A few years later, he shifted to the Oxford district and gave up

photography | after several years there. Fortunately, the dealer hald about 80, of his prints. Many of] them were purchased by the museum.

Samuel Delabere Barker, a son of Dr Barker, did| collodion photographs ’that are a valuable part of the museum’s .’collection, including albums from travels in the Chatham Islands and overseas. i

Another (Canterbury photographer, Alfred Martin, also left a good record of life in the Chathams during the collodion days.

One regret of researchers is that they cannot put names to many preserved photographs, in-

eluding some that have become familiar views of early settlement over the years. Examples of their work are included in the book. Joan! Woodward was unable to interest larger publishers in her work. jThey said that its scope was too small. "It had to be,” she says. “That’s what it's about.”

John Wilson, a Springston writer |and editor who formed Te Waihora Press in 1984 to publish his “Lost Christchurch” (some of its photographs had come from the museum archives), accepted the book, which is being released at about the same time as his third publication, “Rapaki Remembered.”

Arresting paper fungus