Kia ora koutou,
My name is Jill Haley and I am a PhD student based in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Otago. My PhD project, which is being co-supervised by Dr. Michael Stevens (Kāi Tahu ki Awarua) and Associate Professor Erika Wolf, is investigating 19th century photograph albums in colonial Otago.
For Victorian-era people, these albums were a lot like today’s Facebook. They were meant to be shared with other people and were filled with photographs of friends and family as well as places one had visited and other interesting items. As with Facebook, photograph albums were a way to project one’s personal identity and build connections with other people. In short, I am interested in what people in colonial Otago were saying about themselves and their communities through their photograph albums.
In 2007 Toitū Otago Settlers Museum was gifted one such photograph album. Little was known about the album except that it was found in a house at Karitāne formerly owned by the Evans family (who had married into the village’s well-known Parata family). It is highly likely the album belonged to a member of the Parata family because many of the photographs within the album are of Parata family members and people from other Kāi Tahu families across Otago and Southland who were connected by whakapapa and marriage.
This album, which I am tentatively calling the Parata album, provides me with an opportunity to explore how one Kāi Tahu family used an album to show who their whānau, friends and associates were. While I am able to identify portraits of Parata, Taiaroa, Brown, Howell and Mouat whānau members, most of the album’s 96 photographs are in fact unidentified. I am hoping that some of these images may be familiar to readers of Te Pānui Rūnaka and that you might be willing to share information on them. Alternatively, you may want to simply learn more about my project.
Either way, please contact me via email at this address: [email protected]. Ngā mihi nui.
This photograph was taken in Ōāmaru in the 1880’s, but the young man has not been identified.
Ami Raimapaha Hone Te Pae Tahuna (Te Āti Awa), wife of Dunedin magistrate Isaac Newton Watt, taken in Dunedin in the late 1860’s.
This photograph was taken in Dunedin in the late 1860’s -The man is thought to be Hone Mira/John Miller.
Photograph of Hori Kerei Taiaroa taken in Dunedin in the early 1870’s.
This woman’s photograph appears three times in the album, but her identity is unknown. All photographs were taken in Invercargill.