AOTEAROA FROM THE AIR

JENNI CHRISSTOFFELS

DESCRIPTION Whites Aviation staff in the office’s hand-colouring studio, Auckland, 1956

MAKER / ARTIST Photographer unknown

REFERENCE Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs (PA-Group-00080: WA-44609)

DESCRIPTION Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables, c. 1950 Silver gelatin print with handapplied colouring, mounted on board, 380 × 680 mm

MAKER / ARTIST Photographer unknown

REFERENCE Whites Aviation Ltd: Photographs (PA-Group-00080: PAColl-D-1214) Hand-colouring prints made from black-and-white negatives was an important part of Whites Aviation’s publishing activities. Many New Zealand homes had the company’s hand-coloured views on display, like the classic image here of Queenstown with its lake and mountains.

Already well known as an aerial photographer and aviation enthusiast, Leo White (1906–1967) established Whites Aviation in Auckland in 1945. The company published the monthly magazine Whites Aviation, as well as several editions of the popular Whites Pictorial Reference of New Zealand and many smaller one-off publications.

Whites Aviation photographs covered mainly towns throughout New Zealand, with some views of rural areas and scenic hotspots. Smaller towns may have been covered only once or twice, while larger towns and cities — particularly Auckland and its surrounds—were covered multiple times from the 1940s to the 1980s. The 1950s and 1960s were particularly productive, with Whites undertaking extensive photography all around New Zealand, although the last time any part of the South Island was photographed appears to have been in 1974. Unlike government-contracted New Zealand Aerial Mapping, Whites Aviation had no mandate to cover the entirety of New Zealand, so presumably it focused on what would be of greatest interest and commercial value to the company.

Whites Aviation was also employed by various authorities and companies to take aerial photographs. As a result, an extensive range of images—motorways under construction, forestry plantations, new subdivisions and the like—formed part of its stock.

After the death of Leo White, the company went through several changes of ownership, eventually ending up with GeoSmart. In 2007, GeoSmart decided to move away from aerial photography and offered the Whites Aviation archive to the Turnbull Library. The library bought not only the collection of about 80,000 negatives and 55,000 prints, along with the negative registers, but also the copyright to these images. Among them was a large collection of photos taken by Leo White himself from 1921 onwards, including those from his days as a freelance photographer.

The negative from which the image of the company’s office was taken shows early signs of so-called vinegar syndrome, in which the acetate backing has begun to shrink, causing the negative to wrinkle, often to the point where the image can no longer be seen. The Turnbull’s conservation team can make these images viewable by removing the backing, but this is a slow and painstaking process and is done only as required. Environmental conditions in the library ensure the negatives will not deteriorate any further.