Women photographers in the Turnbull Library

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XIX, Issue 1, 1 May 1986, Page 53

Women photographers in the Turnbull Library

JOAN McCRACKEN & JOHN SULLIVAN

Photography has been lauded since its inception as a faithful mirror of reality. ‘The camera does not lie’ has taken its place in our treasury of cliches, and few would query the evidence of a photograph as a true record of all portrayed therein. Nevertheless, the camera can mislead, if not by deed then by omission, as can be demonstrated by a consideration of the Turnbull Library Photograph Collection. A member of the public who spent a week browsing through the public file of prints might form some interesting conclusions about nineteenth century New Zealand. It would become apparent that, although Maori and Pakeha of both sexes and all ages found their way into photographers’ studios in considerable numbers, the only people who indulged in any form of meaningful activity were European males. This distortion in our visual record has several causes. Photographs of the Maori were, at least in the early period of European settlement, taken mostly on the initiative of the photographer, who would have had at least half an eye to the saleability of the image. There are, therefore, many photographs of Maori men and women with their moko prominent and often artificially accentuated, but very few of Maori agriculture of the nineteenth century. Commercial considerations also played their part in limiting the documentation of women in New Zealand society as a whole. Professional photographers relied on the sale of prints to survive, and the prints which sold were those showing spectacular scenery or the commercial and agricultural activities which supported the economy. Women were not generally accorded a public place in these industries and hence rarely appear in such photographs. Limitations in photographic equipment and technique also contributed to the dearth of photographs of women’s activities. With the slow photographic emulsions of the period, house interiors were rarely able to be photographed, and such images as do exist were taken on long exposures which erased all trace of human activity. Domestic activity went largely unrecorded until more rapid photographic materials became readily available towards the end of the nineteenth century. The presence of women on the other side of the lens is equally poorly recorded, 1 yet women have been active in amateur and pro-

fessional photography from the earliest years of the art. In New Zealand women have played an important, if largely unrecognised, role in photography. From the establishment of the earliest studios they have worked as laboratory assistants and negative retouchers,

and several went on to form their own businesses. One of the earliest was Elizabeth Pulman, who carried on the business of her husband, George, after his death in 1871, producing many notable Maori portraits from her Auckland studio in the 1870 s. 2 Her output of carte-de-visite portraits was large, and examples are to be found in museums and libraries throughout the country. The Turnbull Library holds eleven, including well-known studies of Tamati Waka Nene and Rewi Manga Maniapoto. Her portrait of Ratene, a Maori man from Tauranga, became the basis of a painting by Gottfried Lindauer. 3 Around the turn of the century, a quantity of Maori portrait negatives from the Pulman Studio passed into the hands of the Government Tourist Department and were copyrighted by them in 1903, with prints from the negatives being widely disseminated in the following years. 4 In Wellington, women were also early in the field. A Mrs Hamilton is recorded as having a studio in Lambton Quay in the

1870sT By 1878 she was in partnership with W. H. Clarke, and on 2 November that year the New Zealand Mail notes that ‘Messrs. Clarke & Hamilton, Photographers, have finished a splendid collection of our members of Parliament, and it is now on view at the Parliamentary Library’. 6 The Library has many of the carte-de-visite portraits which made up this composition, as well as a copy negative of the completed work. The partnership appears to have been short-lived, and W. H. Clarke’s studio was wound up in 1884. 7

More lasting commercial success attended the efforts of Louisa M. Herrmann, who arrived in New Zealand in 1880 with her husband Robert. In 1889, after several years experience in the partnership of Connolly & Herrmann, they established a studio in Cuba Street, Wellington. 8 Louisa assumed complete control on the death

of her husband two years later, and the studio went from strength to strength, surviving until 1909. The establishment received many complimentary press notices. The New Zealand Mail of 30 December 1897 devoted a column to the new premises built for the studio on the corner of Cuba and Dixon Streets, and this article makes clear the scale of Louisa Herrmann’s enterprise. A visitor to the studio would be conducted first through a vestibule lit by two plate glass windows, each thirteen feet wide, and featuring a counter and display cases in richly carved kauri. The studio itself measured thirty feet by eighteen feet, with a small adjoining darkroom to facilitate rapid changes of plates. On the same floor were the retouching, mounting and enamelling rooms, and an iron staircase led up to ‘a dark room more than ordinarily large; to the enlargement room, where a novel method of lighting is employed, and where accessories have been fixed which will enable the firm to produce life size reprodutions; also to the toning and printing rooms, all constructed with due consideration for the convenience of those employed therein’. 9 Obviously this was no small enterprise; in fact Mrs Herrmann’s studio ranked with Wrigglesworth & Binns as one of the largest portrait studios in Wellington, with business extending throughout the province. She made a specialty of children’s portraits and several of these are held in the collection.

Women photographers were active in other parts of the country at this time. The collection holds some delightful carte-de-visite portraits by Mrs Mary Cobb, who maintained studios in Napier and Hastings from 1890 until 1912. 10 Her studies of Maori women and young children indicate a level of trust between photographer and sitter which is not always evident in commercial portraits of this period. Wanganui, a city richly endowed with proficient photographers, also had a woman in its professional ranks. Edith Williams began taking photographs in the 1890 s and remained active until the 19505. A somewhat reticent practitioner, she did not advertise in any of the regular directories, and the details of her career remain obscure. In 1981 the Library received from her nephew 165 of her negatives, of which 143 are 6" x 8" plates, the remainder being 10" x 12" portraits. They reveal her to have been a talented photographer, with the same skill of putting subjects at their ease that is displayed by other women photographers represented in the collection. In the twentieth century a new generation of women photographers arose. Their introduction to photography was through the camera clubs and photographic societies, rather than apprenticeship to commercial studios, and some of their work received international exposure. Pre-eminent among them was Thelma Kent (18991946), whose landscape and wildlife photographs were often

featured in New Zealand’s illustrated magazines. She was introduced to photography in 1914, when her uncle presented her with a box camera which he had won in a competition. 11 Christ-church-born, she lived in that city all her life and was a constant supporter of the Christchurch Photographic Society. Her photographic interests covered pictorial work, natural history and photomicrography, an interest fostered by work for the Cawthron Institute and the Canterbury Museum. 12 Her work was published and displayed internationally, and was distinguished by numerous awards at international photographic exhibitions as well as an associate membership of the Royal Photographic Society and a fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. A trip to Cape Kidnappers produced a photograph of two gannets which was published in Photograms of the Year; 1939 with the comment that ‘Nothing but photography could produce anything in the nature of an equivalent; and in a thing of this kind it stands supreme.’ 13 In addition to her own photography Thelma Kent played an important role in popularising the art through her radio talks and magazine articles in the 1930 s. 14 Her collection, comprising some 3000 negatives and a considerable number of prints, was donated to the Library in 1948.

Another prominent photographer active at this tinie was Eileen Deste, who was in business in Wellington from at>olit 1933 until 1944, and was the official photographer for the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition of 1939-40. The negatives of this event were

stored by the Library during the war years, but in 1946 they were sent to the photographer at the studio which she had established in London. Their current whereabouts is unknown, but the Library has copy negatives of 400 of the original plates.

The most important work by a woman photographer held in the collection is from the camera of Ans Westra, one of the most influential documentary photographers working in New Zealand today. Born in Leiden, Holland, in 1936, she studied art at teachers’ college in Rotterdam where she developed an interest in photography. This intensified after her emigration to New Zealand in 1957, when she first came into contact with the Maori. In 1959 she joined the Wellington Camera Club (accumulating a hoard of trophies) and worked for Rembrandt Studios, but soon moved out on her own. 15 She became known for her work with Ngati Poneke, in Te Ao Hou, and on commission to the School Publications Branch of the Department of Education. Since then she has continued, at times controversially, to observe and record New Zealand society, directing special attention to minority groups. It is interesting to note that she eschews the almost universal single lens reflex 35mm camera in favour of a twin lens reflex Rolleiflex. Held at waist level, this camera presents a much less aggressive front to

the world and enables her to move unobtrusively in situations where foot-long telephoto lenses and bulging accessory bags call instant attention to their owners. In 1982 Ans Westra entered into an agreement to deposit her negatives with the Library, and to date some 31,000 images (accessible through contact prints) have been received. When the Pictorial Reference Service opens to the public in the new National Library Building in 1987, this collection will take its place as a major documentary resource. It is appropriate that the vision of our own times presented by the Library should in large part have come from a woman, as a tribute both to her own committed, humanistic view of society, and to those pioneers who laboured in obscurity.

REFERENCES 1 Rosemary Bevan, ‘Early Women Photographers of New Zealand’, Photoforum Supplement, 5 (Spring, 1980), 5, provides a general introduction. 2 William Main, Auckland through a Victorian Lens (Wellington, 1977), pp. 14-15 and Maori in Focus (Wellington, 1976), p. 36. 3 James Cowan, Pictures o f Old New Zealand; the Partridge Collection of Maori Paintings by Gottfried Lindauer (Auckland, 1930), p. 142. This illustration may be compared with a carte-de-visite by Elizabeth Pulman held by the Photograph Section. 4 The Photograph Section holds several carte-de-visite portraits from negatives made by the Pulman studio, but which have been overprinted with the New Zealand Government Tourist Department copyright stamp. 5 William Main, Wellington through a Victorian Lens, p. 17. 6 New Zealand Mail, 2 November 1878, p. 18. 7 Ibid., 11 January 1884, p. 22. 8 Main, Wellington through a Victorian Lens, p. 17. 9 New Zealand Mail, 30 December 1897, p. 23. 10 Elardwicke Knight, New Zealand Photographers, a Selection (Dunedin, 1981), p. 99. 11 A. R. Anderson and F. L. Casbolt, Camera in New Zealand (Wellington, 1967), p. 32. 12 New Zealand Listener, 25 August 1939, p. 41. 13 Photograms of the Year, 1939, p. 14. 14 New Zealand Listener, 7 August 1939, p. 12; 25 August 1939, p. 41; 1 September, 1939, p. 1. 15 Witness to Change (Wellington, 1985), pp. 67-71.