Photography officially arrived in New Zealand in 1848, just nine years after the French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerreotype. That process creates an image on a sheet of copper coated with a thin layer of silver, without the use of a negative. It was painstaking and the resulting image fragile.

A captain on a French ship may have taken daguerreotypes on his visit to the Bay of Islands in 1840. But in February 1848, John Newland indisputably took portraits of Māori in the Bay of Islands and advertised their display at a gallery in Sydney. Later that year, photographers were offering their services in Auckland and Wellington. Portraits were initially status symbols for wealthier folk, but as better and faster processes were developed, photography became increasingly available to those from all walks of life.

Landscape photos, not at the whim of people who could not keep still, were taken of places such as Whakarewarewa and the glaciers. Amateurs began to capture the country, family occasions, towns, gold mines and coal mines ‒ people at work and play.

Three research libraries – Auckland Museum, Alexander Turnbull and the University of Otago’s Hocken Collections – have created a touring exhibition of some of the earliest-known photographs of Aotearoa, based on their extraordinary collections. There’s an accompanying book, A Different Light, edited by Catherine Hammond and Shaun Higgins (AUP, $65 hb), exploring photography’s role in capturing our history.

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A Different Light: Auckland War Memorial Museum from April 11; Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, December 2024 - June 2025; Hocken Collections, Dunedin, August 2025 - January 2026.