Unidentified woman and child, c. 1870-89. Photo / William Harding
Unidentified woman and child, c. 1870-89. Photo / William Harding
Photographs by Whanganui settler William Harding are being exhibited in the National Library of New Zealand in Wellington.
The exhibition "Between skin & shirt: The photographic portraits of William Harding", which opened on May 26, contains 60 portraits, a selection from the 6500-piece Harding collection held by the Alexander Turnbull Library.
This will be the first major exhibition of Harding's work.
The exhibition includes a digital display of all the portraits where visitors can take a selfie and have their faces matched with one in the collection, which will then appear on a three-metre-high hanging screen.
The exhibition's curator, Dr Fiona Oliver, said the interactive feature allowed audiences to tangibly connect with Harding's photographic subjects.
Using few elaborate props or backdrops, and unwilling to retouch his photographs to flatter his sitters, Harding's portraits were remarkable for their sensitivity and honesty, Oliver said. The women, men, children, families and other groups who were his subjects appeared with startling immediacy.
"Harding was able to reveal the person behind the formality of appearances," Oliver said.
"These people seem so immediate that we find ourselves looking, it seems, at someone we might know. Maybe that person is ourselves."
Lieutenant Herman and his ventriloquist dummy, c. 1877. Photo / William Harding
William Harding and his wife Annie arrived from England in 1855 and established a photographic studio in 1856 in a two-storeyed, corrugated-iron building on Ridgway St, which is now the Empress building.
Sarjeant Gallery curator of collections Jennifer Taylor Moore said Harding was significant because his photographs provided vast documentation of the Whanganui township during early settlement times.
She said his approximately 6500 photographs documented many of the English settlers and local iwi, and the township itself - including the first library and first post office in Whanganui.
"It's an incredible historic record of Whanganui's history," Taylor Moore said.
She said Harding's work was probably the largest photographic documentation of Whanganui from that time period.
The exhibition, featuring portrait photographs only, is on the ground floor of the National Library building in Wellington and entry is free.
