Look Inside: Through Shaded Glass by Lissa Mitchell

THROUGH SHADED GLASS

WOMEN AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND 1860–1960

ISBN 978-0-9941300-0-6

9 780994 130006

Previous page. Joan Glanville-Clark, who worked as a colourist at Swainson’s Studios in New Plymouth, hand-coloured this photograph of herself in her debutante ball gown around 1947. Hand-coloured gelatin silver print, Swainson’s Studios, New Plymouth. Puke Ariki (PHO2013-003).

Opposite. Daisy Tinney (right) and Morag on the roof of the State Fire Insurance building, Wellington, about 1924. Gelatin silver print. Gift of Linda Fernandez and Louella Freeme, 2022. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (TMP047599).

Following page. Two women working in the Hope-Cross Studio workroom in Masterton some time between 1935 and 1940. Hope-Cross Studio, Masterton. Masterton District Archive (07-92/1-1). Reproduced with permission.

For my mother, Laraine Batchelor (1947–2011)

INTRODUCTION / 8

CHAPTER 4

BEING MODERN / 138

CHAPTER 1

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC STUDIOS / 16

CHAPTER 2 IN BUSINESS / 44

CHAPTER 3

THE ART OF STUDIO

PHOTOGRAPHY / 90

CHAPTER 5

HOMEMADE / 202

CHAPTER 6

ON THE MOVE / 262

EPILOGUE / 332

INTRODUCTION

ON 16 APRIL 1883 a most unusual case came before the magistrate sitting at the court in Naseby, in Central Otago. Fifty-seven-year-old Marion White, who had been a domestic servant in her native Scotland and was now married to a goldminer, had travelled to the settlement some weeks before to have her portrait taken by photographer Malcolm Ries, who ran the only photographic studio in town. She did not like the proofs she was shown, and when she told him so a flaming argument began that spilled out into the street. The constable was called and Ries was charged with using indecent language.

On the day of the hearing Ries conducted his own defence, during which he mocked White for expecting him to show her as a much younger woman: ‘I can’t make a young girl of you,’ he said. Ries was found guilty as charged and fined.1

Given this unpleasant experience, it is easy to see the appeal that a woman photographer might have had for Marion White, and had she been living elsewhere she may well have been able to find one. It is not certain why White found her way to Malcolm Ries’s studio in 1883. Perhaps, having worked hard to establish a new life here, she wanted to send her portrait back to her relatives in Scotland as proof of her success. She expected Ries to show her as she saw herself, but, in an era when, unless you were wealthy and had been taught the complexities of operating the glass plate negative process, and when only professionals owned cameras, he held the power. As the decades passed, however, women would come into their own in photography in Aotearoa New Zealand, both as makers and as subjects.

This book shines a light on those women, and in the process recovers the identities and stories of women who have been hidden from history. Its deliberate focus is on individuals, not to argue for them as exceptional but rather to combat anonymity and generalisations, particularly in the case of working-class women.2

Along the way, the book reveals less explored areas of New Zealand photographic history, including portraiture, photographic factory and studio workers, and amateur photography. It delves into photographic genres such as home portraiture, family photography, album making and photojournalism,

Opposite. Eva Cooper (right) and her sister Irene Ashwood photographed on the porch of their parent’s house at 83 Stanley Street, Berhampore, Wellington some time between 1923 and 1926. Eva has put her own Kodak Brownie camera down on the porch while the photograph is taken. William Saunderson Cooper. Sheet film negative. Gift of Andrew Cooper, 2001. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (A.017915).

This page, right. Hand-coloured portrait of Fletcher Johnston, about 1890. Wrigglesworth & Binns, Wellington. Albumen silver cabinet card print. Alexander Turnbull Library, Henrietta Charlotte Johnston Collection (PA1-o-1890).

Below left. Wedding portrait of a couple whose jewellery (including the woman’s wedding ring) and their cheeks have been handcoloured, 1875–80. Clifford and Morris and Co., Dunedin. Albumen silver carte-de-visite print. Gift of Simon Knight, 2015. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (O.043328).

Below right. An unknown colourist has taken detailed care with the miniature painting of a floral arrangement and headdress in this portrait of Kate Alderson, about 1873. Clarke Brothers, Auckland. Albumen silver carte-de-visite print. Purchased 2022. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (O.049521).

Right. Hand-coloured portrait of John Douglas, 1870s. London Portrait Rooms, Dunedin. Albumen silver cartede-visite print. Gift of Wilga Pierson, 1971. Alexander Turnbull Library (PA2-1042).

Left. Louise Laurent (second from left, standing) with fellow Elam School of Fine Arts students, holding paint brushes and palettes. Back, from left: unidentified, Laurent, Margaret Woodward (later Jackson), Jane Eyre, Alice Falwell (later Whyte), unidentified. Front, from left: Edward Payton, Amy Rhodes (later Smythe), unidentified, about 1897. JC Morton, Auckland. Copy print. Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago (S18-155c).

Below. Women colouring photographs in the workroom at Christopher Bede Studios Ltd, Auckland, 1949–50. Frank Hofmann. Sheet film negative. Gift of the Frank Hofmann Estate, 2016. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (B.078576).

Nevill Studio was operated by sisters Joyce and Joan Nevill, who first employed Wardrop in about 1946, when she was a sixteen-year-old school leaver. When the studio, under the same name, was taken over by PS Anderson, Wardrop continued “to work there, and then from home after her marriage in 1948. Her work included portraits of her own children (see page 31). Sahar recalls her mother’s ‘little bottles of linseed oil, the special smell, and feeling proud of her and somewhat in awe’.46

Unlike the process of adding colour to black-and-white photographs, which has an obvious and enduring charm, the process of retouching by hand has been largely forgotten (though it continues in digital form). Yet retouchers were vital to the success of portrait photography businesses. In her important history of the first century of photography, published in 1939, photographer Lucia Moholy explained that retouching was the way to increase the effects of composition in a photograph – ‘to strengthen or weaken lights and shades, to remove wrinkles and other details, and – if desirable – to alter the shapes and figures of the persons in the picture’.47 What started as a decorative extra had, by the late nineteenth century, become a necessity since larger photographs meant that more imperfections were visible in portraits.

Retouching the negative involved drawing onto the photographic emulsion containing the image with a lead pencil in a circular motion called a ‘stipple’ effect. This was best done without lifting the pencil off the negative and had the effect of blocking out the intensity of the darker areas. The task required ‘a technical knowledge of anatomy and art, as well as skill in using a retouching pencil’,48 to create well-blended tones and an effect that was not visible when the negative was printed. A special portable folding stand was developed (see page 348) that enabled retouchers to work more comfortably than at a flat desk and without resting their hands and arms on their work and causing damage and discoloration.

The influential British photographer Dorothy Wilding considered retouching a highly skilled job and ‘imperfect retouching the badge of the bad photographer’. The process was not intended just to make people look ‘more beautiful or handsome . . . than in real life’ but rather, by the twentieth century, to correct the effect of the very strong light required to catch the subject without movement. Hence the negative exaggerated all the lines, folds and creases in the face, which could be ‘quite grotesque’. To make a portrait ‘as the lens of my eye saw it, and not the lens of the camera’ required the skilled retouching of the negative. Wilding did comment, however, that showing the ‘very bitter pill’ of an untouched negative was a good way of getting rid of a ‘tiresome client’.49

By the 1890s, when more people were taking, developing and printing their own photographs using the new Kodak equipment aimed at the domestic market, the skills of the retoucher were a way for studios to set themselves apart and assert their superior skills. Louise Laurent, great-aunt of Auckland artist Stella Brennan, attended the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1896 and 1897, and used her training to earn a living as a retoucher.50 Laurent was born in France and arrived in Aotearoa as a child with her single working-class mother. Art school was a pathway into the potentially interesting and respectable vocation of retouching, which used knowledge of anatomy and drawing skills.

Opposite above, left and right. Mill Bay, Whangaroa and Carved Maori House. Katarina Hansard, Kaikohe, date unknown. Below right. Portrait of Katarina Hansard by an unknown photographer. All published in the Auckland County Districts (Section 3) Free Part of the Cyclopedia of New Zealand, 1897–1900. Photomechanical halftone prints. Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira (AE91-CYC-p58-2, AE91-CYC-p53-3, AE91CYC-p53-4).

Opposite below left. Photo of a hand-coloured portrait of Aneta Hansard, thought to have been taken by her mother, Katarina Hansard, and lost in the fire that destroyed the Tūtānekai wharenui, Ōwhata Marae, Rotorua, in 2003. Hiwinui Heke, 1999. 35mm colour copy photograph. Private collection.

Right. Little girl with doll, 1893–98. Katarina Hansard for GA Hansard Studio, Kaikohe. Gelatin silver cabinet card print. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections (1192-46).

AN INCREASING NUMBER OF women were working in photography studios during the 1890s, partly as the result of the skills they had learnt through their work, but also because photography could offer financial and personal autonomy. Now, however, more young single women were also setting up their own studios, with varying degrees of success.

When Agnes Williamson arrived in Westport from London in 1896, prospects seemed bright. She had with her the substantial sum of £500, a gift from an aunt in England; half was hers and the other half was for her sister, Isabella, in Reefton.115 Isabella and her husband, Peter McHugh, had promised to help pay Williamson’s fare if she brought them their share. When Williamson moved into their home in Reefton, she soon became aware of her brother-in-law’s mounting debts, even as she was setting about opening a photography studio in the town, taking portraits in her studio and photographing local events and happenings.

Williamson was soon working hard and had a thriving business, with her studio’s address printed as ‘Lower Broadway’ on her portrait mounts.116 In 1902 her panorama of the aftermath of a fire at the Southern Quartz mine at Reefton

Above and opposite. Dredge construction, West Coast, 1896–1907. Agnes Williamson, Reefton. Gelatin silver prints. Blacks Point Museum, Reefton.

was published in the Auckland Weekly News. 117 A small number of her portrait photographs survive and show the elaborate backdrops she painted for the sets in her studio.

Trouble struck when Peter McHugh, who was the manager of a timber yard, was declared bankrupt in July 1907. Williamson testified in court that she had lent him her share of the money from her aunt along with ‘her wages at the rate of 15s per week, and her earnings as a photographer and painter’, presumably out of a sense of loyalty or obligation. Her receipts showed her earnings amounted to £600, £150 of which was costs for materials. When she asked him to repay her, McHugh transferred property in his name to her and Isabella,118 which rendered them liable for his debts. In early September the court ordered that the property, including household chattels and ‘photographic stock’ owned by the two sisters, be sold by public auction.119

Williamson arrived in Wellington on 21 September with the intention of living there but was arrested a few days later, after the Reefton police telegraphed a warrant, on the grounds that she was intending to leave the country and evade

Opposite. Basaltic Columns, Owenga, C.I.

Right. At Owenga, C.I., 1890s.

Constance Foster, Rēkohu Chatham Islands. Gelatin silver prints. Gift of Victoria University of Wellington, 1964. Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (O.006977, O.006972).

Opposite and above. Bodenwieser dancers performing Cradle Song of Mother Earth / Wiegenlied der Mutter Erde, 1950. In the photograph opposite, from left to right, are Jean Raymond, Moira Claux and Elaine Vallance. Lily Byttiner’s Bettina Studio, Auckland. Gelatin silver prints. National Library of Australia (no. 61 and 62 MS 9263/2/23).

In 1945 Verry, a British-born subject who was therefore exempt from the regulations that constrained his wife, applied to have Koppel’s Leica returned to him so that she could take photographs of their two young children, especially following the birth of their son.94 The request was declined, but Koppel was allowed to collect the camera for periods of two to three days to ‘be used exclusively in photographing members of her own family’, and only in her own home. Thereafter she was to return the camera to the police.95 This arrangement remained in place until 19 November 1945, after the end of the war, when Koppel’s registration as an alien was cancelled.

Koppel’s highly regarded architectural photographs, often featuring the buildings of émigré architects, continued to be published until the mid-1950s in such Modernist publications such as Home and Building and the New Zealand Design Review. Her photographs of houses by Plischke and Charles Fearnley appeared on the covers of the latter in 1950.96 Koppel also continued to take portraits on commission until the early 1960s. However, her thirty-year career as a photographer in Aotearoa was marred by displacement and lack of recognition.

In 2001, art historian Leonard Bell expressed surprise that, ‘given the high quality of much of her work and the genres in which she worked – portraiture, photo-journalism, and architectural photography’, she had been forgotten and not included in any histories or accounts of photography in Aotearoa, but instead had ‘dropped out of sight’.97

The genres Bell identified are precisely those that have been marginalised in the histories of photography in Aotearoa. They are also the genres in which most women involved in the medium worked. It was in these genres, too, that Modernism and ‘New’ photography first appeared in Aotearoa in the 1930s, thanks to photographers such as Eila Bristow and Elsa Mawley, who trained overseas, and refugee photographers such as Irene Koppel, who came here from Europe.

Opposite. The Kahn house in Ngaio, Wellington, designed by architect Ernst Plischke and built in 1941, 1941. Irene Koppel, Wellington. 35 mm film negatives. Alexander Turnbull Library (35mm-35607-5-F, 35mm-35602-14-F).