Figure 1.01: G Leslie Adkin: *Untitled, Horowhenua*, c 1924. John B Turner Collection

Is this a significant historical photograph?

A work of art?

Or both?

That is what specialist picture librarians, curators, archivists, and historians are called upon
to decide every day.

***
Please consider the primary criteria:

historic, artistic or aesthetic, scientific or research potential,

and social or spiritual when assessing significance [i]

It was the optimistic tone of the late Dick Scott’s article ‘New Zealand’s photo treasures not exhausted yet’ in a 1963 issue of the short-lived Photographics New Zealand magazine that helped trigger my interest in studying the work of our pioneer photographers and made me decide in 1965 to help preserve and promote their work. Scott (1923-2020) was a ground-breaking left-wing journalist and historian; the author of Inheritors of a Dream: A Pictorial History of New Zealand and Ask that Mountain: the story of Parihaka among other ground-breaking books. He thought highly of Dr Barker’s work and unlike most of his fellow historians he demonstrated the value of identifying photographers as independent participant/observers with their own viewpoints on what and how they chose to record what they saw, thought, and felt.

Today, if Dick was still alive and reporting on the state of preserving our visual history, I think he would be compelled to write something akin to “New Zealand’s photo treasures heading for the tip?” because right now there appears to be a growing crisis over the non-collection of 1950s-1990s photography by our public art and social history guardians.

I have written about the state of collecting photographs as art and social history in New Zealand at various times over the past 50 years from the point of view of a photographer, teacher, collector, curator, and photo historian and am particularly concerned about what is not happening to ensure the collection and preservation of the photographs of my fellow post-World War II generation who have so much of their life’s work invested in large collections of analogue negatives and prints.

This investigation, based on my own and other photographers’ experiences of trying to place their collections in suitable archives indicates, as suspected, that there is a widespread crisis unfolding, and that is the consensus of the librarians, archivists, and curators who we asked to share their thoughts on key issues for this perhaps long overdue survey.

Already there have been at least two attempts by leading curators, picture librarians and photographers to discuss issues around the collection and increasing non-collection of analogue photographs linked to the rapid acceptance of the digitisation of public records and new issues about how to save “born digital” photographs.

The changes spurred on by the electronic and digital revolution have not only changed forever the way photographs are made, viewed, and hopefully preserved, but in the rush to go digital, the tried-and-true analogue photography collections that recorded life in the last half of the 20th Century have become a seriously endangered species. Forced to be more picky, libraries are turning away collections for the wrong reasons because their perennial pleas for more staff and facilities have not been heeded by the authorities charged with the responsibility of preserving our visual heritage. And the single-minded focus on a digital future is leading to the potential loss of five decades of pre-digital analogue photograph collections recording a unique period in our history.

This appears to be a crisis of our own making, and the aim of this investigation is to provide an overview of the present situation, based on my own experience and observations as a photographer, teacher, magazine editor, collector, photo historian and curator. I have been an active maker and user of photographs, since the late 1950s and like most practitioners of my generation, after decades of learning to master analogue photography and making hand-crafted prints in a darkroom, I have adapted to the pros and cons of digital photography and electronic means of presentation with both enthusiasm and a critical eye, to rediscover photography as a vital and paradoxical means of communication, expression, and potential employment.

I draw on some of my earlier investigations into the history and nature of collecting photographs in New Zealand, starting in the late 1960s when I was the photographer and unofficial curator of photography at the then Dominion Museum, and after the early 1980s, when I was able to see for myself something of the world’s greatest photographic archives with which to compare ours.

Much of my focus has been to encourage photographers to realise that it was worth recording their own life and experiences as best they could, to express their personal thoughts and feelings while investigating the rich history of the medium, as an alternative to the conventional records produced by the mainstream press, government agencies, commercial enterprises and the camera clubs.

Being part of a worldwide trend to recognise contemporary photography as a vital art form in the 1960s, especially in regard to recording overlooked aspects of daily life with fresh eyes, required building a new mindset and financial support system for independent-minded photographers. New academic courses, workshops, galleries and niche magazines were created for that purpose.

It was no surprise that when the art world woke up to the importance of photographs in our lives, that those with large disposable incomes would join the genuine risk-taking pioneer collectors and gallerists as welcomed patrons and advocates. The audience for photography had grown up, or so it might have seemed, when a million dollars was first paid for one photograph, and then another. The idea that photographs must be more valuable than previously thought was planted in the common mind along with expectation of fairer rewards to come for their makers. Perhaps more interest will be shown in their work and a sale or two would pay for some expenses and boost their morale? Besides which, the big money had been paid for work by long-dead famous photographers to boost the prestige of the collecting bodies more than photography itself.

The worrying sign that this blog series aims to highlight is that as far as our pictorial history is concerned, it seems that the most senior officials charged with the oversight of pictorial heritage appear to be asleep at the wheel.
John B Turner

As for all critical thinking it is pertinent to ask, “Cui bono?”, the Latin phrase for “who benefits?”, which seeks to know if, and how much those responsible for a certain event are the ones who stand to gain from it. Those with a more nuanced understanding of investment probably wondered if the eventual trickle-down earnings would ever exceed inflation?

There are obviously some benefits for photographers seeking to identify themselves as artists first and foremost due to the reputation and popularity within the traditional art market, where they can ask and might even receive higher returns on certain pictures. Good luck to them! It takes considerable sacrifice and persistence to build and sustain an appreciative audience for any kind of work from which to earn a fair return. It is worth remembering that there are only two prices that matter: an asking price and a selling price.

And that libraries, which have by far the biggest archives of photographs, turned off by art market prices, are likely to turn to other photographers when seeking to fill the gaps in their archives. The possibility of negotiating budget price sales to fulfil a library’s interests is lost, while the archivists wait like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff to acquire, as they traditionally have done, whole collections from unprepared and overwhelmed heirs for free, or pay a pittance to save them from the dump.

The cost of creating a collection is one thing for us to reflect upon, but so also is the cost of preservation when it is transferred to a collecting institution, as libraries are now using as an excuse for not accepting collections. The major difference, however, is that public collections are set up for just that purpose - as a public good. It is their job to make wise decisions about the content and fate of a photographer’s legacy. To understand how society itself can benefit requires stepping back to consider the intrinsic social and historical value of things and ask how and why our cultural heritage is being constructed and used in the way it is?

The financial burden is real, but when did we last hear anybody explain that 1,000 significant photographs could be purchased for the cost of a single painting purchased decades after it was made at a highly inflated “market” price? And where were the empowered curators who could have purchased the work when it was first exhibited and offered for a fair sum from which the painter would have benefitted most? Today it is the dealer galleries who take the risks in the hope that their picks will be appreciated by public and private collectors.

Auction houses compete on safe bets but as they run out, increasingly test the water with the work of neglected contemporary, historical, and unidentified practitioners and create new market such as the currently fashionable NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Public curators are often unable to compete for notable works because their management simply won’t give them the free hand needed during the race to bid.

Another issue which deserves more scrutiny, is how much governmental support is overbalanced in favour of Wellington’s (national) collecting institutions relative to those in every other centre.

These are just some of the issues this vox poll of photography curators, picture librarians, photographers and concerned others have identified over and above the public documentation and promotion of their institution’s aims, priorities, successes, and failures. The worrying sign that this blog series aims to highlight is that as far as our pictorial history is concerned, it seems that the most senior officials charged with the oversight of pictorial heritage appear to be asleep at the wheel.

Contact
Editor: johnbturner2009@gmail.com PhotoForum: photoforumnz@gmail.com

The library as art museum

Things appear to have changed since 1978 when I wrote about the Alexander Turnbull Library’s photography collection for Art New Zealand: [ii]

Our libraries and museums hold by far the greatest wealth of outstanding vintage photographs in New Zealand. They won them by default from the art galleries, who have only discovered photography in the last few years. The Turnbull library has been a Mecca for photo-researchers since the late 'forties. With four full-time staff currently, by my reckoning, it is the best endowed, most used and biggest collection in the country.

The Turnbull has some of the finest vintage prints by most, if not all, of the outstanding photographers of Victorian New Zealand. Ironically, and frighteningly, up until a few years ago they have hardly known what to do with them. They have found themselves suddenly in a new and unexpected role as curators of a major art collection. It is, admittedly, a reluctant role that is only now making its presence and its need known. So the question must arise: how well is this library equipped, or for that matter how is any library or museum in a similar situation in New Zealand equipped, to meet this new role? And how has this necessity come about?

The Turnbull's brief is to collect and preserve photographs of historical significance, using that term in its broadest sense. No practical discrimination is made between the work of the most gifted amateur photographer or the most banal; nor between the most exquisite 'vintage print' (a print made about the time the negative was exposed) or the ugliest copy imaginable.
John B. Turner, Art New Zealand, 1978

Today, as Natalie Marshall, their Curator of Photographs noted, the Turnbull is being offered “over 150 photographic collections each year and we’re waiting for the digital tsunami to hit”.

Roughly speaking, of the 120 to 200 photographic collections offered over the past three years (around three to five each week) the rejection rate is about 70%. Whatever the outcome, investigating the diverse nature, content and size of collections and the time required to complete the process of acquisition is a lot of work and responsibility.

Seen merely as statistics, such numbers might seem reasonable, but the rejection of about 70% of “collections” offered begs crucial questions about exactly who, how and why the decisions are made? It raises the question of what will happen to the work that is not accepted and whether parts, no matter how small, are worthy of being added to the Library’s holdings?

It is heartbreaking to learn that the negatives of now faded or defaced photographs were cleaned and used to build a glasshouse or left to rot under the house… [xiii]

Yes, we are back to the crucial issues of significance, staffing and storage again. Few photography collections are ever written about for public edification, and it can be assumed that it is the success stories, or news of unexpected destruction of collections that are documented rather than focusing on the actual selection process. There might be in-house reports justifying the rejection of material, but neither those reports, nor whatever alternative solutions are suggested for those considerate enough to proffer items for the public record, are usually published. Consequently, something resembling a forensic analysis of the procedures applied in New Zealand could help to instil confidence in the process.

Frankly, I doubt that there are enough knowledgeable picture librarians or curators employed to fulfil current needs. Consequently, it was no great surprise recently to hear that a public collection refused a set of framed documentary photographs with the excuse that they didn’t have the space to store them. When the “experts” can’t imagine deframing pictures to save space, (if that was the real reason for not accepting a gift) there is something seriously wrong and we need to know more about who makes such decisions.

Another trend of concern is the growing expectation that photographers not only need to curate their own life’s work before a library will consider adopting it but must also resign themselves to expect no financial recompense for any works accepted, based on their assessment of costs incurred by the collecting institution – to meet its responsibilities! Not only that but the recipient would like the intellectual rights to the work given to them as well, to simplify what used to be called “paperwork”. But once a collection is acquired, with permission to put images online, there are few signs of any universal reciprocity or guarantee, apart from a picture credit perhaps, that every effort will be made to preserve the integrity of the work in the context of its making. And there seems few signs signaling any intention to present the work in curated exhibitions or publications, through in-house or collaborative events.[iii]

There are sensible and mutually advantageous reasons for a living donor to make life easier for picture archives by agreeing to transfer copyright. Historically, as mentioned, most of the major photographic collections were acquired after the death of the photographer or sale of their studio, and only occasionally with any financial recompense. A much more considerate and collaborative approach is needed today to successfully deal with the complex nature of both personal and institutional responsibilities for what is set aside for preservation, with the existential need for urgent action to identify and save significant bodies of work at the top of the list.

The broad aims of this investigation were:

To warn established photographers that they cannot presume that their photographs will likely be considered, let alone evaluated, or eventually adopted by public archives.
That if they value their own work, photographers and their supporters will now have to fight for its recognition and plan to avoid unwanted dispersal or destruction of valued content.
To remind photographers why, regardless of their original intentions and personal measures of success, certain of their images, whether few or many, would inevitably be of historical or art historical significance.
To find out if the picture professionals share my concern that there is a crisis over the non-collection of photographers’ analogue collections representing the last half of the 20th century - before the electric digital photography revolution turned silver-sensitive chemical processes and paraphernalia into fringe historical techniques for recording the world?
To identify the governmental departments and officials charged with the responsibility of preserving New Zealand’s cultural heritage and see if they are living up to their public duties on behalf of all New Zealanders?

Many but by no means all of the prominent curators and picture librarians around the country were approached share their insights and experiences for this investigation, and I am grateful for their permission to quote from their responses to what started informally with a spontaneous list of questions first addressed to Athol McCredie at the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa to find out why it was becoming so difficult to find homes for significant collections. Those first questions, based on my personal experience of institutional reluctance and new hurdles to jump when it came to save collections were blunt:

What for you are the big issues that prevent Te Papa from being more proactive in acquiring collections?
What do you think should be done about this?
What can photographers do to make their collections more relevant and attractive for institutions to collect?
And do you consider this is a crisis in the making, or soon could be unless (what you think could/should be done about it)?

Knowing something of the kinds of complexity and restrictions faced by heritage institutions, and how boring it is to read the fine print of their stated aims and intentions, I chose to add abbreviated examples from the formal reports of the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the NZ National Library in particular, to demonstrate the impressive breadth of thinking that goes into seeing the larger picture and deciding on their current priorities and next steps. Far from being bureaucratic puffery, their policy briefs acknowledge failures, and reveal a great deal of mind-opening angles from which a photographer can learn to better appreciate the unrealised value of their work and use to argue why their work should be saved for posterity.

This, in turn led to my inclusion of the public declaration of the Department of Internal Affairs Te Tari Taiwhenua which is charged with the ultimate responsibility of heritage collecting through the financing of a wide range of dedicated organisations including Archives New Zealand, the NZ National Library/Alexander Turnbull Library and the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and History, which has overall responsibility for Te Papa.

As the umbrella organisation, the Department of Internal Affairs acknowledges its official responsibility for ‘preserving New Zealand’s documentary heritage and ensuring a full and accurate public record is created and maintained’.[iv] That’s one mighty and complex task, just from the point of view of preventing content biases that refuse to accept homegrown photographs depicting alternative, hedonistic, or criminal lifestyles, for example, that public archives, echoing the views of “polite” society, neither represent nor seek for the “full and accurate public record”.

The Department of Internal Affairs, however, appears to be oblivious to any signs that there might be a crisis brewing over the non-collection of photographer’s collections. And as far as I can tell, as of February 2022, no responsible officials have initiated either an investigation into the general situation addressed here, nor a tally of the number and quality of collections at risk. I don’t know how much it would cost but it seems reasonable that something of out of the Department’s 2020 budget of $3 billion for digitising over next five years could be used to ensure that five decades of significant analogue photographs are not excluded from the historical record.[v]

That is why it is chilling to note that the accountants, who should be the last people to decide on heritage significance, are having their say, when the Turnbull Library states in their ‘Principle no 6’ that:

The Library’s process for approval to purchase collection items includes consideration of cost and benefit and is followed at all times when the Crown’s acquisition budget (my emphasis) is used to build collections.

For items that are acquired for the Photographs collection, the total cost of collecting, processing, conserving, and providing access is one factor considered as part of determining the benefit to New Zealand of having the items preserved in perpetuity as part of our documentary heritage.

That seems reasonable on one level but a key problem is that our libraries have a dismal record when it comes to seeking targeted private or corporate sponsorships

Subsequently, I discovered the lively blog of the Australian photographic historian and curator Gael Newton who is addressing these same issues. I discovered the wisdom of her compatriots, Roslyn Russell and Kylie Winkworth who wrote an influential guide on how to measure the significance of collections and individual objects to help decide if they are worth preserving. And I was delighted to find that the Auckland Art Gallery had published a valuable blog by their archivist, Caroline McBride, who encourages artists to take a liberal and holistic approach to archiving their work.

To give some idea of the complexity of getting a photographer’s collection evaluated for a public collection, I have included case histories about the collections of the late Paul Gilbert (pre- and post-digital), Tom Hutchins (classic analogue photojournalism recovered with digital scans of negatives) and Max Oettli (scanning analogue negatives in collaboration with the Alexander Turnbull Library for online use). All three were my friends and colleagues from the University of Auckland where we taught photography, and I have taken the liberty throughout to mention and illustrate issues to do with my own work. There are in addition numerous mentions of many collections in various archives.

Rather than attempt to do a nationwide review like Ted Quinn’s groundbreaking survey, 'Results of a survey on the State of New Zealand Photography as regards Public and Private Art Galleries, Libraries and Museums', published as a Photo-Forum Research Supplement in April 1977, this review attempts to lay a sampling of multiple points of view on the table as a basis for urgent discussion, corrections, elaborations, and new ideas from all concerned.

To this short list of case studies, I have added the dilemma that New Zealand archives and the US documentary photographer Barry Myers face over what will happen to the substantial essays about life in New Zealand that he made over several decades. Would the Library of Congress in Washington DC or Auckland’s heritage archives be the most appropriate home for his unique documentation of Newmarket and a Māori fisher family? The answer should be obvious, but the parochialism and lack of vision and enterprise that virtually lost the eminent US-born photographer John Fields’ decade of NZ photographs to Australia, for example, is fresh in mind.

How best to resolve such issues? It is presumed that readers have an interest in photography for both its documentary and expressive (art) values and would not advocate the nuclear option of doing nothing to prevent the destruction of significant work from our lifetime, but are interested in sharing their views on the content and significance of images and bodies of work worth preserving for future generations.

Finally, based on my desire to find out how the NZ National Library presented an exhibition of the early “music” photographs of Barry Clothier, which I was unable to see for myself, I offer a critique on the problems encountered over the paucity of information, ambiguities and inaccuracies discovered in their online catalogue, and the questionable curatorship and presentation of my late friend’s photography.

`The Art of Photography: A Contradiction in Terms?’

One of the central and complicating issues about photography is if, how, and when a photograph can be considered not just a pictorial record but a work of art, because the answer determines how it is perceived and treated, price tag and all. And subversively, it questions what art is, especially with a capital A? The results might not be very good, but intention, artistic intention, can be seen as one deciding factor in the lower strata of the hierarchy of accepted art history, just as a documentary motive pervades history, journalism, education, science and photography. To complicate our understanding, both intentions can not only merge but can do so unintentionally.

Figure 1.02: Dr A C Barker (1819-1873): *‘A C Barker Christchurch NZ Nov 28 1864*’. Dr A C Barker collection, Canterbury Museum (Ref: 1944.78.41). Digital copy of a gold-toned POP print made from the original 6x4 inch wet collodion glass plate in the Canterbury Museum in the early 1970s by John B Turner.

Dr Alfred Charles Barker was one of many pioneer photographers of photography’s first century to deliberately set out, with future generations in mind, to make a visual history of their life and times. As such, he made priceless and enduring images of the early development of Christchurch as a colonial city in the making, telling portraits of many of its inhabitants, and heartfelt portraits of his surviving family after the death of his wife, Emma, in October 1858.

By contrast, for the great majority of photographers in our times, it seems that the potential historical facet of their work, if recognised at all, is usually of a peripheral nature whether made for personal or professional reasons. Intention, however, is not the be all and end all when it comes to the use-value of photographs, because even the humblest, or even accidental image, is often capable of providing as much information and insight as a consciously crafted “art photograph”.

Figure 1.04: John B. Turner: *Photographer’s office, Dominion Museum, Buckle Street, Wellington*, 1968. (JBT68-128) Turner Collection.

One of the most elegant and succinct explanations of this paradox that I have read comes from a little-known essay, `The Art of Photography: A Contradiction in Terms?’ written for a Newsweek advertising supplement by John Szarkowski in 1968:[vi]

‘For a generation or more—at least since Moholy-Nagy said that knowing photography was as important as knowing the alphabet—photographers have enjoyed believing that their medium was the central art of the day….

The prevalence of photography, at any rate, is beyond dispute and its influence on the patterns of our perceptions and prejudices is immense, fascinating, and unstudied. As a cultural phenomenon, its influence is comparable in magnitude to that of the automobile and much less well understood.

All of this is, of course, not necessarily relevant to an understanding of photography's significance as on art. The difference between art and other important cultural influences (automobiles, political revolts, famines, etc.) lies in the fact that the latter change the world directly, while art changes only the sensibility through which we understand the world (my emphasis). Nevertheless, most arts produce, during periods of good health, works which are also answers to practical or non-artistic problems. A work of architecture, for example, can also be used as a place of worship or as a warehouse for other art works. Similarly, a photograph can serve many functions other than the one that the photographer was interested in and which—if he were successful—was the satisfaction of his own imagination.

‘Until recently photographers have taken a snobbish satisfaction in the fact that they have in this sense led a double life—that they were laborers in the vineyards and also artists. In part this was a species of romanticism … but it was also a sort of bet-hedging. For if the individual photographer should eventually have to admit that he was not in any large sense an artist, he could still take comfort from the fact that he was helping to do the world's work.’

John Szarkowski ,`The Art of Photography: A Contradiction in Terms?’ written for a Newsweek advertising supplement, 1968

Szarkowski, the influential curator of photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art was pointedly challenging advertising and commercial photographers and their industry to think again about the nature of art and photography. Extremely few working professional/commercial photographers deserved the appellation of “artist” in the strict sense of the word, he asserted, because their work did not challenge the status quo or change the way we see the world. Art, he asserted, does not tell us what we already know, but asks new questions.

The concept that anybody can become an artist is prevalent and joyfully amplified by “how to” articles and the instant gratification of seeing one’s work displayed on the internet. That’s not a bad thing, and even if it was, the flood of images can hardly be stemmed. Whether our work is significant and worth saving for posterity is an altogether different issue, and while it is easy to agree that the greater proportion of it won’t feature in any history of art, it’s not so easy to dismiss all of it as having no social historical value.

It also questions to what degree art galleries might need to be more like libraries and vice versa to break down snobbish barriers, share more, and ramp down the inflationary financial costs that prop up art world prestige without undermining quality and discernment?

It may be forced on us by the current crisis, but the time has certainly come for all serious photographers to take stock of their life’s work and reconsider its social relevance beyond the ken of the art establishment. Personally, I long ago discovered in the work of Eugene Atget and Dorothea Lange, and John Thomson before them, an ideal mix of art and social concerns in photography, with their art and sense of history driving home their message. To study photographs of all kinds from a historical and art historical point of view, to compare nominal and actual intentions, and note the reactions of their contemporary audience is, I think, one of the most fascinating and rewarding aspects of research in this huge and fertile field.

Inspired and challenged by what I saw in the US, Canada, UK and Europe during my December 1979 to February 1981 first sabbatical research trip, I wrote a feature article for AGMANZ News[vii], the quarterly of the Art Galleries and Museums Association of NZ, titled ‘Some Notes and Queries on the Collecting of Photographs by Libraries, Museums and Art Galleries in N.Z.’ It was aimed at a new generation of librarians, archivists, and potential curators to whet their appetite for paying closer attention to the nature of photographs and why they needed to be collected and respected, speaking from the position of a photographer, teacher, historian and curator.

My personal case study
As part of my personal case study which permeates this investigation, I acknowledge that it is the Auckland Art Gallery with which I have had more contact with than any other since I moved from Wellington to Auckland in 1971. I am grateful to Ron Brownson for his 2017 invitation to gift my history of photography research papers to their E H McCormick Research Library, and to their archivist Caroline McBride and her staff for making that a reality. Now known as the John B Turner Archive, it consists mainly of published and unpublished resources relating to the development of photography in New Zealand and overseas since the late 1950s, and sits alongside their archives of artists, and other art historians and activists specialising in various media. Despite the relief of having part of my collection saved, the future of my own photographic negatives, proof sheets, work prints, and digital files amassed over 60 years is uncertain. I have to look elsewhere and contemplate splitting my archive because unlike most libraries and museums, the Gallery has a long standing policy of not collecting negatives as such.

My association with the Auckland Art Gallery goes back to 1969 when I was asked to submit a proposal on creating a dedicated department of photography in 1969. They didn’t do that, but instead belatedly made Tom Hutchins and me honorary curators to start a collection of photographs in 1975, which we did until T L Rodney Wilson’s appointment as the Director in 1981. Thinking about photographs as art, let alone buying them, was a novelty and the threat of losing entire photographer’s collections in the future was not an issue.

Like many of my contemporaries I mostly consider myself as an independent photographer who has had the privilege to photograph the things that interest me in the way I see fit, whether personal, public, or political. Which means that my output is all over the place from casual to carefully considered content, from finished projects to abandoned ones, and experiments with this and that which in retrospect appear diaristic in nature and make up for an unreliable memory. Photographs and a sense of history became one for me and as I wrote in the book that accompanied my mini retrospective exhibition at William Main’s Exposures Gallery in 1985: ‘I’ve written about photography and my growing understanding of it for almost as long as I have used photographs to say what often I could not otherwise dare to say.’ [viii]

I have often written about photography’s contrary and paradoxical dual role as vehicle for producing historical visual evidence and expressive art, sometimes all in one. Setting aside those few images tagged as successful artistic expression, it needs to be acknowledged that most competent practitioners cannot but make pictures that almost inevitably have some historical and cultural significance beyond the canons, fads, and blinders of art appreciation.

Understanding your own archive

As Gael Newton explains so well in her ‘Parting with Your Art’ and ‘Photographer’s archives’ blogs (to be summarized in Part 3 of this report), being forced to face having to disburse one’s collection is a disturbing unknown of serious concern. A task that can take years of work, as several respondents have stressed.

Figure 1.05: John B Turner: *Detail of JBT136 Proof sheet from series on Gary Turner's first day at school, Paparangi, Wellington,* Oct 1967, showing the exhibition organiser’s selection and intended cropping of my images for New Zealand Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka, Japan 1970. The theme of this, Japan’s first World Fair, held from 15 March to 13 September 1970 was "Progress and Harmony for Mankind." At least 77 countries participated in the event which attracted 64 million visitors, one of the largest and best attended expositions in history. The organisers of the NZ Pavilion received great acclaim for their film ‘This is New Zealand’ directed by Hugh Macdonald for the National Film Unit and was later shown throughout NZ but did not bother to show even installation shots to the photographers whose work was featured by them on revolving columns and the like.

Figure 1.06: Screenshot of revolving columns of photographs shown inside the New Zealand Pavilion at Expo 70, Osaka, Japan 1970, from the video of the film ‘This is New Zealand’ directed by Hugh Macdonald for the National Film Unit. Overall, some 64 million people visited Expo 70 which was, at the time, a large record for international expositions.

With the advent of new digital methods of production, use, valuation, and conservation, it seems timely to review the root causes of the forced separation of the template (the photographic negative or positive) and the editing process leading to a “finished” photograph.

New and holistic solutions are needed to resolve this collecting anomaly, and unnecessary hurdle of access for research. Rather than only being treated as precious artifacts in the way that paintings are, especially from an archival perspective so the peculiarly paradoxical, disruptive, and anarchic nature of photography in the art world can better be understood through informed study of its hidden methodologies. Just as the selection of certain images from a particular series of photographs can say a lot about an editor’s mindset - separate from the author’s intentions - so too can a curator or collection, if the proof sheets and/or negatives can be studied for more of the evidence and context.

Conceivably, one practical solution to this art vs actuality anomaly would be for the Auckland Central Library, which is also funded by the Auckland Council and is physically located directly opposite the Auckland Art Gallery across Wellesley Street, to collaborate with the Art Gallery on sharing the different parts of an archive if it is forced to split. Providing, of course, that both institutions are willing and sufficiently resourced to do so.

Too many opportunities have been missed when it comes to keeping special collections whole: those of Hardwicke Knight, New Zealand’s eccentric pioneering photographer, photo historian and collector, and the breakup of William Main’s painstakingly assembled collection for the New Zealand Centre for Photography on its demise are but two glaring examples of how to destroy the integrity and value of unique archives.

The spectre of having to split a body of work to save it, also hangs over Tom Hutchins’ collection which is in my care and still awaiting a resolution. As accomplished and influential as he was, Tom paid little attention to preserving his legacy as an outstanding news photographer, Time/Life photojournalist stringer, or as a pioneering teacher of film and photography. As outlined in a separate case history below, his collection includes identified and unidentified negatives and colour transparencies but few of his own prints due to his own neglect, which partly had its roots in the perversely ahistorical ethos and short memory of most newspapers whose photographers considered they were “just doing a job”.[ix] His extant work ranges from New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and China (a year before Brian Brake), which strongly suggests that his collection should be in a national, rather than regional archive. (And that reminds me to ensure that my own photographs made in the UK, Europe, North America, Australia, and China are not separated from my predominantly NZ work, wherever they end up.)

Rather than forcing photographers to cull their collections before they will even be considered for public preservation, most of us would gladly accept the need for the guidance of qualified library and/or curatorial staff for making informed decisions in what is likely a new and stressful situation where decisions cannot be reversed. Just as the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson stressed that a record of a moment not photographed is lost forever; as Keith Giles at the Auckland Central Library notes, the same applies when, if a library turns down a collection it often means that it is never seen again and there is no hope of sifting through it.

Editing one’s images is one thing, because it is flexible by nature and always interesting. But the inherently murderous process of ruthless culling, when warranted, goes against the grain for a photographer who knows that subtle differences of timing, framing, colour and tone can make all the difference to the meaning of a picture. Deciding on which is the best image for a particular purpose depends on its specific use. It’s not just about the choice of a vertical or horizontal variant, or wider vs closer views. Personally, I habitually err on the side of deliberately saving different versions “for the record” or “just in case….” without knowing if or when they might prove useful in the future.

Figure1.08: John B Turner: Teenage proof sheet, c.1960.

Cropped and slightly romanticized prints intended for display in camera club circles were made from my Wellington street scenes, and Paekakariki railway station images in the 1960s. The raw images, perhaps including that of the fresh toadstools could have some historical use if nobody else recorded them at the time. But it is my deemed reject as a picture - that of the golliwog doll in the broken pram in suburbia - that could prove to be the most interesting image of all for younger generations learning about the histories of imperialism, the slave industry and racial stereotyping.

According to Wikipedia, the golliwog ‘had great popularity in the UK and Australia into the 1970s. The doll is characterised by jet black skin, eyes rimmed in white, exaggerated red lips and frizzy hair, a blackface minstrel tradition. Today the word is regarded as a racial slur towards black people.’ To me in partial innocence, it was the weird juxtaposition of doll and pram, of black and white objects, that itched to be photographed, and pre-Edward Weston and Diane Arbus convinced me that it was not a good picture.

Figure1.09 John B Turner: *Yin, Bo and Theresa Ye, M & M Takeaways, corner Te Atatu and Wharf Roads*, 6 March 2005 (JBT027), from the *Te Atatu Peninsula* series. Theresa is explaining to her Cantonese parents why I want to photograph them at work for my personal documentary essay on daily life on the West Auckland community where I lived. Despite the initial interest and deposit of some of the digital files to the Henderson Public Library, the concept of them having a full set to put online for local interest just fizzled out, probably due to staff shortages, after the Library put on a small exhibition of the work. It’s time consuming to edit but inexpensive to provide copies of digital files from anywhere in the world, so I’m still hopeful that the library might be able to prioritise and complete the intended project.

It is interesting to note that photographers’ proof sheets are now being sold as a popular commodity by art dealers, and picture agencies such as Magnum Photos. Treated as closely guarded professional secrets in the past, the content, sequence of events and unexpected images revealed by proof sheets and negatives provide vital clues and answers for any art or social historian. But relying on them to accurately represent somebody’s work also has its pitfalls, as I explain in my review of a dubious exhibition of Barry Clothier’s work at the NZ National Library in 2021 (Part 10)

What are the actual and virtual realities involved in art and heritage collecting in the light of today’s knowledge and future needs? History tells us that art is a vital signifier and measure of culture. Art galleries gain prestige and support according to what they collect and deem worthy of exhibiting. No collection can ever be complete, due to all kinds of circumstances, biases, and financial constraints, but with luck, to present a plausible representation, some key items might be found and borrowed from other public or private collections if they were saved in the first place. More sharing and emphasis on a collaborative approach between institutions, however, seems to be hampered not just by traditional institutional rivalries but an overall shortage of specialist staff with the time and will to work together.

Recognition and consensus

Whatever they are, the current processes of attributing significance to collected art and cultural artifacts for posterity seem to be accepted almost without question. Even though the choices ultimately depend on a tiny number of collectors, connoisseurs, critics, curators, bureaucrats, and patrons, each with their own favourites and agendas. Despite this limitation, the consensus seems to be that the select “names” who do get into the upper echelons of the art loop are usually deserving. How, why, and when they achieved that status, (most often by consensus through belated recognition), is seldom discussed in detail but offered as a given.

How accurately the anointed reflect the peaks of achievement overall is another issue, which in international photography, is challenged when the extraordinary work of somebody like Vivien Maier (1926-2009) is discovered after she died. Many practitioners deliberately shy away from the public spotlight, even when they have loyal supporters and end up outside the loop. They don’t thrive on the kind of manufactured controversies fed by mainstream media hellbent on presenting art as a mystery beyond their comprehension, and dribbling or rubbing their noses over the highest of prices that living practitioners rarely get.

One reason why the pool of recognition fills so slowly is that writers, students, and editors are incentivised to focus on the output of already valorised individuals for popular consumption. Few art teachers introduce their students to the mind opening challenges of primary research, in my experience. And most do not encourage even their most accomplished students to submit their work to the editors of local news outlets, let alone niche journals, free of peer review. This in a world that is desperately short of writers committed to cutting through the commercial promos to explain the nature and true value art and artistic expression on the full spectrum between being tame or subversive.[x]

It is evident from their official reports that many institutions now recognise the need for more holistic and collaborative approaches across various collection areas. So any policy that accepts prints but refuses to consider the collecting of a photographer’s negatives appears not just outdated but counterproductive from holistic and archival perspective because it so obviously hampers serious research.

Whether art galleries will see reason to change their policy regarding the collection of photographs is one thing, but if they don’t the argument for an entirely new entity specialising in collecting photographers’ collections gains strength. Whatever transpires, it is difficult to believe that dividing a collection can ever be deemed the preferred and best practice. Once again, it would help to see evidence of closer practical working partnerships between art galleries, libraries and archives to satisfactorily resolve such issues.

Among the questions Athol McCredie raised for this survey was to ask what archives can/should do about interesting “images that were never considered worth exhibiting or publishing by the photographer?” That there is a subtle difference between considering and selecting (or rejecting) an image is illustrated by the history of my c.1960 proof sheet with the golliwog image shown here. One of the many reasons why significant photographs never get exhibited or even printed is simply because intent, demand, and opportunity do not coincide. My advice to photographers is to print them as well as possible and explain the facts of their making so their origin and history is transparent. Sometimes, as is very common, only one print is ever made, then passed to somebody else and/or eventually lost or destroyed? Evidence of intent, such as marks on a proof sheet, and nipped edges on a strip of negatives can provide vital signifiers of choice and intention if specific knowledge of the modus operandi of their maker is not known, but are not absolute proof that a print was ever made.

The fragile and unstable nature of analogue negatives and transparencies means they need cool storage facilities to prolong their life. Athol McCredie argues that the need for dedicated cool storage is one reason why art galleries don’t collect negatives: ‘You can’t display them, because they need a cool store, conservation, cataloguing and curatorial expertise’ he said. Art galleries, he emphasised, ‘are traditionally predicated on the singular object that can hang on a wall or stand on a plinth. Negatives just don’t fit this paradigm’.

Even though the space needed to properly store negatives, compared to storing prints may be greater that I had calculated, it leads me to question how much the current crisis over the non-collection of photographer’s archives due to the lack of specialist staff, nationwide, who know the value of negatives as well as prints?

It’s been a decade since I was separately approached by two established photographers, John Miller and Reg Feuz, for my thoughts on how best to ensure that their work could be preserved for posterity? They wanted to know which public library, museum or art gallery would be interested in their work and would make the best use of it?

Wisely, they were both thinking about the future of their work after their death and knew that as a former museum photographer I had written about such issues and helped find suitable homes for photographer’s collections over the years. It’s a vital subject for those who value their legacy and the situation has become increasingly complex and stressful because our public archives are applying more demanding standards of documentation and personal curatorship than in the past before taking in a collection: a resistance that I have personally observed in regard to several collections that I discuss in detail for this investigation.

Figure1.10: Tom Hutchins: One of hundreds of damaged vintage prints of China in 1956, made in the early 1960s for an intended book for which he could find no publisher. The prints, manuscripts, and Chinese publications were stored in cardboard boxes under his Auckland home where most of the items were damaged by garden slugs and snails. Tom Hutchins Images / Turner Collection

One of my long-term commitment is to preserve and get just one important body of work out into the world: Tom Hutchins’ outstanding and previously neglected 1956 essay on China. A project which even led me to start a new life in China when I retired from Auckland’s Elam School of Fine Arts in 2011. My experience of seeking to promote and place Tom Hutchins’ collection is outlined later as a specific case history revealing a high degree of complications due to its content, which is not dissimilar to Brian Brake’s photojournalism, and condition which needs more work to sort and preserve.

Well aware of how easily a collection can be damaged or completely lost, my apprehension about what to cull and what to keep is certainly on the rise, lest some unforeseen disaster eliminates any choice at all. No insurance policy payout can bring back a lifetime of visual evidence. I recently learned that the family of my old friend Tom Shanahan (1923-2004), the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra trombonist who was also an accomplished photographer, had 50 years of his photographs destroyed when theirs was one of several self-storage units that went up in a devastating fire. As his daughter Jane reported, the collection was set for preservation at Wellington's Alexander Turnbull Library, and the family had been busy cataloguing it before it was delivered to the Library. [xi] In the same devastating fire photographer Stephen A'Court lost equipment as well as prints, among which were his prized portraits of Royal New Zealand Ballet dancers and Circa Theatre thespians from the 1990s.

There's no telling what any delay might mean, of course, but there is little doubt that other collections will similarly be lost for one reason or other due to the growing insistence of stressed institutions for collection owners to meet new levels of cataloguing and documentation that have not been publicised.

Figure 1.11: Tom Shanahan. Detail from front of Government Printing Office, Wellington, commemorating Niepce and Daguerre, c.1966. Turner Collection.

Although I was an apprentice compositor from 1960 to 1965 and worked inside this building sited next to the Wellington Railway Station, I don’t think it occurred to me to photograph this tribute to the main French inventors of photography, but thankfully, Tom did.

Figure 1.12: John B. Turner: Tom Shanahan (rt) in discussion with Brian Brake, Wellington, c.1966. Turner Collection

My first traumatic encounter with the destruction of a photographer’s collection occurred in 1966 when I was starting out as a self-appointed photo historian. Impressed by the vitality and historical value of the postcards produced by ‘Zak’ (Joseph Zachariah 1867-1965) a prolific Wellington photographer, I tracked down his widow and visited her one weekend to find out more about his life and work. It was then that I learned that Mrs Zachariah, just one week earlier, had consigned his large collection of negatives to the nearby Karori Tip. For her, it seemed her only option after the setback of receiving an unenthusiastic response from the then staff of the Alexander Turnbull Library.[xii] I rushed to the tip after hearing her story but was unable to find where Zak’s negatives had been buried. Still in shock over the destruction of Zak’s collection, I wrote a letter to the editor in response to a mid-July 1966 Evening Post editorial encouraging readers to consider offering their historical treasures to the Turnbull Library:

It is heartbreaking to learn that the negatives of now faded or defaced photographs were cleaned and used to build a glasshouse or left to rot under the house… [xiii]
I endorse your “Tell the Turnbull” suggestions if anybody thinks they may have something of historical value to give away, but I have serious doubts that the Turnbull Library’s photographic section is able to cope with what it has already. Anyone who has anything to do with the ATL knows of their acute shortage of staff and storage space. They are trying to do an important job under impossible conditions. To enable the library to concentrate on its literary activities I suggest that the photographic section is removed from their hands, merged with the Dominion Museum’s photographic branch and housed as a photography department, with specialized staff, in the proposed new Art Gallery-Museum building. The museum could be organized along the lines of the Museum of Modern Art in New York which has provision both for the historic and contemporary work in all of the arts.

I didn’t know enough about the different roles that art galleries, museums and libraries had assigned to themselves then and was mistaken in thinking that MoMA collected photographer’s negatives as well as prints.

Figure 1.13: Zak (Joseph Zachariah): *At the ‘Statue’, Wellington, 1909.* Postcard print. Te Papa, Wellington. (PS.003396) MA_I340733.1000

Figure 1.14: John B Turner: Anti-US Vietnam war protest, Parliament Grounds, Wellington 1965. Turner Collection

It makes sense to remind individual photographers of their responsibility for the basic documentation of their images in the first place, before they any commitment is made to assume their control. Many photographers are likely to have done so already, but for those who leave it too late, or their burdened heirs, every delay could be a step towards the demise of unique art and social history records. That is the dilemma facing both the post-WWII generation of photographers and our pictorial archives, which is urgently in need of serious public discussion and political scrutiny.

Fifty years ago, collections were lost because photography was undervalued as art and visual history. Today, while digital means of recording and dissemination are boldly prioritized by libraries and archives, the greatest danger is the evident lack of planning and resourcing to ensure that we do not lose the unique bodies of analogue work created during the five decades, 1950s to 1990s. The very time, as Athol McCredie has stressed, that a new movement in photography grew to record New Zealand’s life and culture in a more intimate and personal way:

The new image makers created photographs that were more than just substitutes for the subject; like the world they depicted, their images were more subjective, complex and rich than any previously imagined. These photographers used the camera to know life – for themselves, for audiences then, and for us now.[xiv]

The need is obvious need to take stock of the situation, no heritage archive or government department has taken on the responsibility of identifying which are photographers dotted around the country who, like Tom Shanahan, have proved to be among the most insightful observers and recorders of New Zealand society.

My guess is that there are far more than a hundred, and perhaps 500 whether modest or prolific in output who have made significant contributions that deserve the kind of serious attention earned by our most celebrated practitioners, such as Ans Westra whose photographs helped define our understanding of New Zealand culture in so many ways and what it is to be a New Zealander.

Fortunately, her work, and that of too few peers is safely preserved in government and local body archives where it belongs and can be shared. Recognised as both a documentary photographer and artist, she along with Craig Potton is one of few to have dedicated galleries of their work in the business sector. Collecting institutions, these days, are very much aware of the special treatment required for Taonga Māori and some Pacific Island and other religious and cultural traditions that treat photographs as other than just historical artefacts or commodities. (See the Auckland War Memorial Museum’s policy statement, for example.) And should we need to be reminded, many of the Pakeha photographers whose collections are currently endangered species, will undoubtedly include images pertaining to these non-European groups and their adaptation to foreign cultures too often through the domination and repression of difference.

As John Miller, our most prominent Māori documentary photographer is fully aware from his work, there are many aspects of recording and presentation of situations that require nuanced knowledge of protocol that Pakeha often transgress. Which is one of the reasons that new safeguards and restrictions in keeping with Māori taonga mean that if some items are held by public institutions for safekeeping may not be readily available to the general public and can’t be seen through an online search.

That Miller’s own collection, for whatever reasons, has not already been secured by a public archive seems highly remiss to me, and worryingly highlights the present crisis. He has a phenomenal memory and as a notable independent photographer has already spent years painstakingly cataloguing his own photographs without the institutional backing and urgent protection that such a unique and obviously significant archive deserves. We have too few Māori photographers, after all, and none of his stature and dedication to presenting a social history of Māoritanga that is often focused on the political activism of leaders and workers involved up front and behind the scenes to uphold the promise of equality promised by the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi).

Many of his photographs cannot be used, at least in the present, without the unequivocal permission of his subjects, while others, treasured by the subjects and iwi, may never be considered as suitable for public consumption.

Figure 1.15: John Miller: *‘Takaparawhau, Bastion Point Arohanui interior, including Reverend George Armstrong, Colin Clark, Father Walter Lini, and Phil Goff, Auckland* 1977’. Courtesy of John Miller

Honouring agreements not to make specific images public without the explicit permission of the subjects, or within an agreed timeline, is common for those recording sensitive subjects. Nor is placing restrictions on the access and use of certain photographs new for most archives, when they deal with issues linked to the criminal justice system, sexual intimacy or personal privacy concerns, for example: contentious issues that long after the subjects have died, even, are rarely discussed in public, let alone illustrated by the “hidden” photographs that are most vulnerable to hasty destruction, not least because their value as historical documents of real-life activities condemned as immoral or “deviant” depending on culture, place and time, is by no means understood. Remember that kissing in public, displays of same sex affection or even heterosexual intimacy are among the activities disapproved of not long ago, but all aspects of interest for an avid photographer.

Who decides what “difficult” images should be collected and when it is ok to lift any embargo on releasing them is another complex issue due to the fine line between censorship, historical evidence and perceptions of transparency and the public good. If an urgent decision must be made about whether to save a collection considered highly controversial or deviant (such as Robert Mapplethorpe’s sexually explicit work, for example) the risk of a public collection refusing it could be quite high, even when some experts might advocate for its acceptance. But, even with the most simple, logical or visionary proposals, there is only so much that individuals can do when committees can’t be persuaded to take what in hindsight can be seen as the most sensible path that should have been taken before it was too late.

We may need entirely new picture archives to meet present and future needs, as Keith Giles, the Auckland Libraries’ photography specialist has advocated. In his view an entirely new archive dedicated to collecting endangered photography collections is justified under the circumstances and should be an urgent priority for the government. One that collects analogue negatives as well as prints and digital files for posterity. For him it has been impossible for his library to be proactive when they have no room or staff to store and process collections and it pains him to recall collections that were destroyed, and the knowledge that other collections will continue to be lost through continued government and local body neglect.

There was a significant uptick in both making and collecting photographs in the 1980s, to put it mildly, amid the worldwide promotion of the medium as a vital means of communication and expression then taught in many tertiary and secondary schools as a facet of art and as an enticing vocation. Worldwide, the sheer number of dedicated practitioners has grown exponentially, as have the number of individuals deserving a place in the annals of the medium as an art. Consequently, any attempt to produce fair and accurate global histories of photography to counter the old US/European-centric models is today bound to fail. Not only due to language barriers but also to social, political and economic schisms.

As Gael Newton elegantly demonstrated in her landmark survey exhibition ‘Picture Paradise: Asia-Pacific Photography 1840s-1940s’ at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia in 2008, every country has significant photographers of their own who deserve a slither of genuinely international recognition.[xv] Most, including in Australasia, are still waiting for the US Empire to follow the British decline in self-importance to have their moment in the cultural sunlight.

Figure 1.16: Alfred H Burton: BB3513. *Koroniti (Corinth) Whanganui River*, 1885. Whanganui Museum Collection. A low-resolution thumbnail file of a photograph showing the adoption of European materials to an old-style Māori village. Only useful as a memory jogger, the file, typical of many online, is virtually unreadable and demands seeking the original print or more authentic copy to study.

From the perspective of New Zealand photographers of my hippy and “concerned photographer” generation, there are warning signs that our efforts to create an alternative picture of the country we lived in – a more honest unofficial version free of propaganda and clichés – are not being recognised or valued for our modest insights. Perhaps we were mistaken to think there was merit in recording the actual look and nature of real life situations in our lifetime, and our images could be just as insightful as seeing Dr Barker’s photograph of his family, home and surrounds. Or as telling as Alfred Burton’s portraits of Māori leaders struggling to assert their mana while our colonist’s forefathers’ connived to run their railway though the middle of communally owned King Country land.

There is no guarantee that any of our own photographs will carry a similar weight in history. But while nobody really knows which images will leave an indelible impression for future generations, we have specialists in the field of visual archives who do have a good idea based on their everyday interactions with people searching for and finding meaning among the most unlikely as well as most popular images in our archives.

Because it is not easy to compile a definitive selection of one’s photographs, let alone see our life’s work through other people’s eyes, having a specialists look at our collections and suggest what is worth saving would provide a valuable service. And while they can be expected to reflect their organisation’s point of view, photographers likewise can see if archivists “get it” and understand what they were attempting to do. Alternative homes could also be suggested and considered. The importance of moral support along with informed critical feedback cannot be overestimated and can make all the difference to prevent the destruction of visual evidence that could prove valuable in unexpected ways.

End of Part One
Coming soon: Part Two: Te Papa

Endnotes for Part 1: Introduction

[i] Based on criteria proposed by Roslyn Russell and Kylie Winkworth in Significance 2.0: a guide to assessing the significance of collections, Collections Council of Australia Ltd, 2009: ‘5 Four primary criteria apply when assessing significance: historic, artistic or aesthetic, scientific or research potential, and social or spiritual. Four comparative criteria evaluate the degree of significance. These are modifiers of the primary criteria: provenance, rarity or representativeness, condition or completeness, interpretive capacity.’

[ii] John B Turner. ‘The library as art museum’, Art New Zealand, February/March/April 1987.

[iii] The Auckland War Memorial Museum’s occasional display and promotion of the late Robin Morrison’s work in their care is a notable example of what can be done to honour the gifting of significant collections.

[iv] https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/DIA-Digital-Annual-Report-2020/$file/DIA-Digital-Annual-Report-2020.pdf

[v] See Department of Internal Affairs 2020 report: DIA-Digital-Annual-Report-2020.pdf, p 17

[vi] John Szarkowski: `The Art of Photography: A Contradiction in Terms?’ `Film & Photography’. A Newsweek Global Report, 7 October 1968, pp. 5-7. `Film & Photography’ is one of a new, informative series of Global Reports prepared and edited by the Marketing and Advertising Departments of Newsweek International.

[vii] John B Turner: ‘Some Notes and Queries on the Collecting of Photographs by Libraries, Museums and Art Galleries in N.Z.’ AGMANZ NEWS, Quarterly of the Art Galleries and Museums Association of New Zealand, Vol 4, No 2, June 1983. The periodical was edited by Jan Bieringa, whose late husband Luit was then the Director of the National Art Gallery in Wellington and also the President of AGMANZ.

[viii] Four copies of the bound photostat compilation of articles and correspondence, Good Luck John: I: Under the Influence, were made to accompany my mini-retrospective exhibition of photographs from 1960-1970, shown at William Main’s Exposures Gallery in Wellington in 1985. An intended volume II never eventuated.

[ix] See ‘Restoring Photojournalism: Tom Hutchins in China, 1956, Art New Zealand, No.160 Summer 2016-17, in which I provide details and explore issues relating to the value and use of negatives and reprints when no vintage prints exist. The reason he gave for not saving his news photographs, he weakly confessed, was because he viewed his work as just a job.

[x] My own experiments with introducing undergraduate students to the arcane delights usually reserved for university graduates, proved how quickly their research made them the expert on a certain aspect of the work of their chosen practitioner which they catalogued for my History of Photography in New Zealand (HOPNZ) papers at Elam in the 1980s and 1990s. They also bonded with their subjects or heirs and sometimes received unexpected gifts of rare photographs.

[xi] https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/9907303/Precious-items-destroyed-in-blaze. I wrote a story about Tom Shanahan’s photographs, ‘Second trombone plays second fiddle,’ which was published in the May 1968 issue of Australian Photography magazine, and it was through Tom that I first met Brian Brake in Wellington in 1966.

[xii] See William Main and John B Turner’s anthology, New Zealand photography from the 1840s to the present Nga Whakaahua Aotearoa Mai I 1840 Ki Naianei (Photoforum 1993) for a small sample of Zak’s postcards. And William Main's book Edwardian Wellington: photographs by Joseph Zachariah (2009) compiled from scattered prints located over several decades. We mistakenly named him Zacharia (without the h) in our anthology.

[xiii] Ironically, it was the destruction of Tom Hutchins’s prints of China in 1956 that were left to rot under his house that created so many problems for the reconstruction of his essay. I also note that my letter to the editor is evidence of my early interest in becoming a curator of photography which later led me to become the then Dominion Museum’s photographer, as well as relating to the current crisis regarding the preservation of photographic collections around the world.

[xiv] Athol McCredie: The New Photography: New Zealand’s first generation of contemporary photographers, Te Papa Press, 2019. Includes portfolios and interviews with Gary Baigent, Richard Collins, John Daley, John Fields, Max Oettli, John B Turner, Len Wesney and Ans Westra.

[xv] Gael Newton’s brilliant survey exhibition, ‘Picture Paradise: Asia-Pacific Photography 1840s-1940s’ at the National Gallery of Australia was prematurely closed to enable structural faults in the primary galleries to be fixed in time for an overseas exhibition of post-impressionist painting.

Acknowledgements

This is to acknowledge with thanks the generous help of many people in contributing to this investigation through their professional work in this specialist field of pictorial heritage within the social history and art spheres and for sharing their experiences and concerns here. They include Natalie Marshall and Matt Steindl at the Alexander Turnbull Library; Athol McCredie from The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Ron Brownson and Caroline McBride from the Auckland Art Gallery; Shaun Higgins at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, and Keith Giles at Auckland Libraries, in the North Island. And in the South Island, Sarah Murray and Jill Haley at the Canterbury Museum; and Ken Hall at the Christchurch Art Gallery. We are grateful to those institutions among them who have kindly allowed us to publish images of significant photographs already saved and treasured by them.

We are grateful also to feature the specific contributions of Gael Newton, Roslyn Russell and Kylie Winkworth from Australia, and Caroline McBride from Auckland, who are all leaders in their fields. Thanks are due to Barry Myers, and Max Oettli for allowing their experiences to become case histories, along with those of the late Paul C Gilbert (supported by his sister Linda Gilbert and Rim publisher Haruhiko Sameshima), and that of Tom Hutchins whose remarkable legacy I have been documenting for 30 years because he didn’t.

Valuable exhibition installation views have been provided by Mark Beatty and Paul Chapman from the Turnbull Library and Auckland Art Gallery, respectively and both Sal Criscillo and Chris Bourke who kindly made photographs of ‘The Simple Image: The photography of Barry Clothier’ exhibition at the Turnbull for me to understand its content and form..

Some of the points I wanted to make, and reminders of the important technical and practical advances brought by digital copying, had to be made with historical examples and comparisons from public or private collections. But generally, I have tried to illustrate different points with digital copies of a variety of images that I think should be preserved for posterity but have not been acquired for any public collection to the best of my knowledge and are therefore a part of the endangered species of analogue photographs at the heart of my concern. It is impossible for me to represent anything near to a full spectrum of what could be discovered either in quantity or quality simply because no audit of potential collections has been done to identify the unique content of hundreds of presently unknown collections of significant analogue work. Some of the illustrations I have added are placed to inform and challenge institutional policies which specifically exclude certain subject matter, even though I know of many cases where wisdom has prevailed to save works that otherwise would fall between categories and be lost. Guidelines are necessary, but always there can be exceptions to the rule.

More than 30 individual photographers have kindly permitted us to include one or more of their photographs in this survey, for which we are grateful, but at the same time aware that many of them belong in the category of significant photographers that no heritage department or collecting institute has approached them about the possibility of inspecting their body of work or potential custody of it for posterity when they can no longer care for their work themselves – the central theme of this blog series.

Thanks are thus due to: Peter Black, Kevin Capon, Tony Carter, David Cook, Sal Criscillo, Brian Donovan, Reg Feuz, Bernie Harfleet, Martin Hill, Murray Hedwig, King Tong Ho, Robyn Hoonhout, Megan Jenkinson, family of Sale Jessop, John Johns’ family, Hanne Johnsen, Ian Macdonald, Mary Macpherson, John Miller, Mac Miller, Barry Myers, Anne Noble, Max Oettli, Craig Potton, Doc Ross, Tom Shanahan’s family, Frank Schwere, Jenny Tomlin, Tim J Veling, Ans Westra, Wayne Wilson-Wong, and Diana Wong.

For editorial help I am most grateful to Haru Sameshima at the middle stage of restructuring this series, even when I did not always act on his advice; and also to Photoforum Web Manager Geoff Short for tidying up my messy attempt to create a series of blogs of relevance to photographers and picture specialists so they can see shared issues from each other’s point of view. The need now is for photographers and archivists to work together to ensure that photographers collections are not destroyed due to ignorance or an acute shortage of specialist staff and facilities.

Currently, despite plenty of formal policies and well thought out expressions of intentions for the preservation of our visual heritage, it is disturbing to detect so little evidence, despite the warning signs, that the official guardians of New Zealand’s visual heritage have turned a blind eye to what can be argued was one of the most active and relevant movements for the photographic recording a period of great change in New Zealand society due to a pivot away from Great Britain toward the larger world. To neglect the bodies of work by hundreds of dedicated practitioners of analogue photography from the latter half of the 20th Century, for whatever reasons, as seems to be the case, heralds a monumental disaster and mockery of our visual heritage aspirations. But with serious attention and collective action it is, hopefully, not too late to avoid that disaster which would once again see New Zealand’s photo treasures heading for the tip.

-John B Turner, Consulting Editor, Photoforum Inc.

About the editor

John B Turner was born in Porirua, New Zealand in 1943, and became an enthusiastic amateur photographer who participated in the camera club movement as a teenager. In Wellington, he worked first as a compositor at the Government Printing Office, then as a news and commercial photographer at South Pacific Photos. He was briefly a photographic printer for The Dominion newspaper, a mural printer for the National Publicity Studios, and later the photographer at the Dominion Museum (now part of The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) during the 1960s. Before joining Tom Hutchins, the pioneering academic in photography and film, as a lecturer in photography at the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1971 Turner had written widely about the medium and co-curated the exhibitions ‘Looking & Seeing’ (1968), ‘Maori in Focus’(1970). He also curated the landmark 'Nineteenth Century New Zealand Photographs’ exhibition of 1970 while working in Wellington.

From Auckland he curated 'Baigent, Collins, Fields: three New Zealand photographers’ (1973), and initiated 'The Active Eye' survey of contemporary NZ photography in 1975. The founding editor of PhotoForum magazine 1974, he has written widely on many aspects of photography for local and international publications. He was a director of Photoforum Inc., and is currently a consulting editor and contributor. He studied the history of photography with Van Deren Coke and Bill Jay, at Arizona State University, Tempe, U.S.A., in 1991, and was co-author with William Main of the anthology New Zealand Photography from the 1840s to the Present (1993). He edited and designed Ink & Silver (1995), and also Eric Lee Johnson: Artist with a Camera (1999). He was a member of the Global Nominations Panel for the Prix Pictet Prize, London, and has lived in Beijing, China since 2012, where he continues to curate shows and write about aspects of historical and contemporary photography in New Zealand and China. In 2016 with Phoebe H Li, he co-curated a survey exhibition for Beijing’s Overseas Chinese History Museum of China, titled ‘Recollections of a Distant Shore: New Zealand Chinese in Historical Images’, and co-edited and supervised the production of a bilingual book of the same title. That exhibition was later reconfigured as a year-long feature by the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Turner curated the first exhibition of Robert (Tom) Hutchins’s work for the 2016 Pingyao International Festival, and published the catalogue Tom Hutchins Seen in China 1956, with the Chinese translation and production assistance of filmmaker Han Niu. He has since placed Hutchins’s China photographs with the VCG (Visual China Group) and Getty Pictures agencies. Hutchins’ work has gained international acclaim and was featured along with Brian Brake in the Chinese language anthology China through the lens of foreign photographers (2020) and is now available in English.

Turner first exhibited his work outside of the NZ camera club and NZ Professional Photographers’ Association circles (for whose magazines he also wrote) in 1965 with a joint show with Barry Clothier at Artides Gallery, Wellington, and in the 1980s had two solo exhibitions at William Main’s Exposures Gallery in the capital city. He features in several capacities in Nina Seja’s Photoforum at 40: Counterculture, Clusters, and Debate in New Zealand (2014). In 2019 his work was included along with seven peers in ‘The New Photography’ exhibition and book about New Zealand’s first-generation contemporary photographers of the 1960s and 1970s, curated by Athol McCredie for The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

His website 'Time Exposure' is at www.jbt.photoshelter.com and you can contact him at johnbturner2009@gmail.com

The opinions expressed by the authors and editor of this report are not necessarily those of PhotoForum Inc.

NEW ZEALAND’S PHOTO TREASURES HEADING FOR THE TIP? - Part 1

Notes on the collection of photographers’ collections for posterity

A PhotoForum discussion paper by John B Turner

Part 1: Introduction

The library as art museum

`The Art of Photography: A Contradiction in Terms?’

Understanding your own archive

Recognition and consensus