Webb's photography auction given first airing

The history of photography in New Zealand, as Hardwicke Knight pointed out in his 1971 "social and technical" history of the subject, is unmatched "because the period of pioneer colonisation closely coincided with the invention and development of photography".

As early as 1848, colonists took daguerreotypes, a process that was not made public in France until 1839.

Since then innumerable photographers - some named, mostly unknown - have recorded our history. And, in line with overseas trends, photography has become not just a popular pastime but an arts medium that is encouraged, collected and taught at the highest level.

The celebrated Metropolitan Museum in New York did not establish photography as an independent department until 1992, and the Getty in Los Angeles in 1984, arguing that "photography is an art fundamental to its time in which individual works of great rarity, beauty and historical importance have been made".

In Australia, where there is a burgeoning market for photography, and commensurately high prices, there is also what Ben Plumbly - curator of Webb's first photography auction, to be held next month - describes as "the kind of short-term rampant speculation that constitutes a bang-and-boom marketplace".

Here, he suggests with Dunedin diplomacy, enthusiasts are not swayed so much by fashion but by the wish to collect well "without investing enormous sums of money".

Maybe. For whatever reason, buyers here are reluctant to spend the same money on photographs that they do on other forms of art, and photography probably never will be a mass market.

There are some wonderful images in Webb's offering, including the early and endlessly fascinating historical photographs by the early colonists and professionals, the often doomed old buildings of Les Cleveland, the carefully composed landscapes of Chapman-Taylor, and the social observation of Ans Westra, and the near-abstraction of Peter Peryer.

Like Meiji prints, many of these works show the clash of two worlds. The famed Burton brothers, for instance, captured two Samoan girls bare-breasted, seated on a flax mat and playing cards.

Even if you are not interested in buying any of these works, a visit would be worthwhile just to see something of what has made us who we are today. The sale is on November 24.

Coming up: Webb's A2 sale is next week, with affordable art on Tuesday, jewellery on Wednesday and 20th-century design on Thursday. The Simon Manchester eclectic collection - including glass, plastic, kiwiana and taxidermy - will be on Saturday.

Cordy's next antiques and art sale is November 8.

The International Art Centre's next investment art sale is on November 29. It will be held at 272 Parnell Rd, below the retail gallery.

Dunbar Sloane's new venue for its December sales is the Pavilion, behind the old central Post Office in the Britomart precinct. The sale will include militaria, on Sunday, December 11, Maori artefacts on December 12, and art, December 13.