CAPTURING THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE

JEANNIE SKINNER

DESCRIPTION Waino Sarelius skating, about 1938

MAKER / ARTIST Thelma Kent (1899–1946)

REFERENCE Thelma Kent Collection (PA-Group-00400: 1/2-009527-F)

A young person’s interests and enthusiasms, encouraged by a supportive adult, can flourish into a lifelong pursuit and, sometimes, develop into a career. When she was 14 years old, Thelma Kent (1899–1946) was given a box Brownie camera by an uncle keen to foster her artistic talents. She soon won a newspaper photography competition, upgraded her camera and, with a darkroom set up in the garden, taught herself the art and science of photography.

Kent worked in her father’s Christchurch business doing the accounts, and as an independent, single working woman she had freedoms that were new to her generation and gender following the First World War. At every opportunity through the 1920s and 1930s, she would take herself off in her car to explore and photograph the high-country landscape of mountains, rivers and lakes that so inspired her.

Kent’s career paralleled the rise of popular photography as cameras became more affordable and portable. Her work embodied the spirit of the age in other ways, too. Increased leisure time, more cars and new roads on which to drive them enhanced opportunities for tourism and travel, and there was an expanding interest in exploring remote places and getting ‘back to nature’, as well as taking part in new recreational activities such as tramping and mountaineering, skiing and skating.

This wintry image, taken possibly at Lake Tekapo, shows Waino Sarelius, a champion ice skater originally from Finland, who taught fitness at Kent’s former high school. He’s probably practising his figure skating — a picture of poise and balance. The ice rinks at Tekapo and Mahaanui Mount Harper were popular destinations for Christchurch skaters, and Kent and her friends made frequent winter visits there.

Kent’s photographs of Māori taken when she visited the North Island’s East Coast are warm and natural, and more informal than those typical of the time—it is easy to see a thread connecting her work to that of Ans Westra a couple of decades later (see page 162). Kent was also one of the pioneers of micro-photography, contributing her expertise to medical and scientific research.

Kent died of cancer when she was only 46 years old, but her legacy of photographs shows a life full of adventure with friends and family, and an artist’s eye. Her extensive collection was donated to the Turnbull Library in 1948 by her family.

With increasing temperatures due to climate change, outdoor natural ice-skating rinks in Aotearoa are pretty much a thing of the past — even in the coldest parts of the country.