When first asked to write introductory essays and the captions for Our Land in Colour, Brendan Graham’s history of Aotearoa New Zealand through his colourised photographs, I was not enthusiastic. There were already several excellent books by Keith Sinclair and Dick Scott telling the history of the country and its peoples through old images, and I had doubts about whether we could add anything. But the moment I began looking at Brendan’s work I was hooked. I knew many of the photographs already in black and white form, but to see them in colour was a revolution in consciousness. It brought exciting new perspectives and a new experience of the past.
For a start, colourised photographs bring a shock of reality. We are used to looking at the past through a black and white lens. It is as if the New Zealand of the 19th and early 20th centuries was a foreign country, made slightly unreal because colour didn’t exist. Then we look at those decades in colour and they come alive in an indescribable way.
You pick up a black and white photo of sailing ships in Hokianga Harbour in 1908 and the ships look quaint and “historical”. Then you look at the image in colour. Your eyes pick out in the foreground white smoke floating against the green of pine trees and coloured washing on a clothes line and you realise this is how people actually lived and how they travelled at sea. Or you turn the page and see a two-page spread on the Wellington wharves about the same time and immediately the walking city comes to life. You recognise the scene, it is Queens Wharf, but that’s not what gives the sense of lived reality; it is the subtle colours, the blue uniforms of two message boys, the green of the luggage store, the smart white dress and hat of a woman with her parasol and the brown and white of the two horses pulling a cart. Your imagination has so much more to work with.
And the faces suddenly take on personality and immediacy. Sometimes it is just groups of people, such as a remarkable image of eight wool scourers eating their lunch in the sun where each face is distinct and individual. Two are snoozing while two others look as if they are about to bring forth some humorous remark.
Sometimes it is individuals such as the portraits of two early feminists, both Kates – Edger and Sheppard. In each case you look at the coloured image and sense you know them so much better. Edger’s protruding mouth and penetrating eyes suggest a deep intelligence. Sheppard’s impeccable clothes and hair, and her strong jaw, evoke a person who is in control – a natural leader and superb organiser.
If colour gives life to old photographs, it also helps, through the contrast of colours, to highlight details that get lost in the original greyscale. Several insights followed for me. The first section of the book, for example, has images of Māori. In one sense, these are not “real”, because they are all highly posed photographs, many set up for tourist mementos. Yet the colourising brings out repeatedly the fascinating mix of tradition and Western influences in 19th-century Māori culture.
Many of their houses are thatched with walls of raupō, but you can also pick out Western-style verandahs and the occasional glass window. European imports such as hens and horses, not to mention dogs, abound. One notes how many Māori are smoking, usually a pipe, and interestingly, there are as many women puffing away as men.
As for their clothes, some have dressed up for the European photographer in traditional cloaks, while many others are shown in Western garb. Colour brings out how often 19th-century Māori used blankets, usually worn over their shoulders like a traditional cloak.
Indeed the nature of all New Zealanders’ clothing in the past is revealed by the details thrown up by the contrast of colour. The overwhelming impression is the formality of New Zealanders’ clothes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In our eyes, they all seem to be “dressed up”. Working men wear jackets, waistcoats and thick woollen trousers. Jeans, shorts or jerseys are not to be seen. Working women, such as those pictured harvesting hops in Nelson at the turn of the 20th century, are smartly turned out in blue dresses and white tops. Three men proudly displaying their catch of some 30 kererū wear hats with a feather, smart jackets and waistcoats, and each has a fob watch. The chief mechanic on the first aerial crossing of Cook Strait in 1920 is not in a boiler suit, but wears a tie and a brown suit with a white handkerchief in the pocket.
Even in factories dress appears astonishingly formal to modern eyes. At the famous Edmonds “sure to rise” baking-powder factory in Christchurch in 1908 the men wear blue waistcoats and white aprons, while in the Aulsebrooks confectionery factory along the road the women packing the sweets do so in white gowns and hats. Even the driver of a beautifully painted red Shell petrol truck shows off with jodhpurs, a double-breasted jacket, a bow tie and a smart white naval cap. Men playing cricket in a Nelson paddock in 1905 sport hats and waistcoats. Where are the whites? you ask. No wonder New Zealand was so bad at the game at that time.
A third insight that the details uncovered by colour suggest is the way our cities were transformed by changes in transport. We begin with an extraordinary image from James Bragge of Masterton’s main street in 1879. Apart from the photographer’s own horse and caravan, the street is deserted of traffic. Men, presumably in town to visit the pub, hang about on the roadway, for there are no footpaths.
The street itself is unpaved, but what the colourising brings out are the piles of horse manure on its surface. The streets are owned by horses and pedestrians. Things move at a gentle pace. By the turn of the century, safety bicycles with air-filled tyres appear in photographs and the street surface is macadamised.
Before long the bicycles get motors and the first private cars appear. In addition, public transport emerges, at first with trams drawn by horses and then with electrical lines. By the 1920s, as an image of Lambton Quay shows, the battle is on. Pedestrians still attempt to own the street, but they face stiff and dangerous competition from the cars and the trams. It’s not long before they are confined to the footpaths and have to go from one side to the other by pedestrian crossings. Parked cars appear alongside each route. Cyclists ride at their peril. The automobile has not yet totally conquered – cars continue to battle with the trams for control of the street, as a 1949 image of a chaotically busy Queen St suggests. We realise it was only when trams disappeared that the car finally conquered, a triumph with which we are still coping.
Finally, you can’t help noticing how strong was the gender division during those years. You can pick out men, women and children on a number of orchestrated scenes taken of Māori communities in the 19th century, such as the extraordinary photo of the Parihaka community in 1885, which fully repays getting lost in the colourised detail. And there are a few formal photographs of Pākehā family occasions such as weddings where men and women share the limelight. But in general, one is struck how virtually all the images of workplaces are segregated by gender, and even the photos of recreation – from watching rugby to hunting to surf lifesaving – show exclusively male involvement. The scenes of cooking or looking after babies, in contrast, show not a man in sight.
But it’s an interesting coincidence that just as the years of black and white came to an end with the arrival of coloured film in the 1950s and 60s, New Zealand began to undergo massive social changes that would challenge the earlier world. Gender differentiation was one of those aspects that saw the greatest transformation as women entered the workforce and took control of their reproduction.
This was but one of many big changes – from the assertion of Māori rights and the big increase in non-British migration to the emergence of large cities and an urban culture – that would transform New Zealand after 1960. For this reason, looking at these images in colour and revelling in the details of people’s lives makes Our Land in Colour both engrossing and surprisingly informative.
Our Land in Colour, by Brendan Graham and Jock Phillips (HarperCollins NZ, RRP $55 hb).
