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Christchurch where he made the acquaintance of ge-
ologist Julius von Haast, a person who was to play an
important role in Mundy’s photographic career. Leav-
ing the portrait side of his business to a partner, Mundy
commenced a series of New Zealand landscapes, start-
ing with a journey from Canterbury to the gold fi elds
of the West Coast through a newly discovered pass in
New Zealand’s Southern Alps. In doing so he depicted
a route along which supplies could be transported to the
diggings safely without recourse to using coastal ship-
ping and the treacherous river ports of the West Coast.
Gradually as he moved further afi eld from Christchurch
he acquired a range of views which made him the fi rst to
go about the task of accumulating a fairly representative
selection of New Zealand views.
Forever mindful of the circumstances that made
New Zealand unique from the rest of the world, Mundy
photographed the country’s major rivers, lakes and
mountains, supplementing these when he could with
mining operations, fl ora and fauna. In 1869 with history
in mind, he journeyed to the East Coast of the North
Island to photograph the spot where Captain Cook had
landed a hundred years ago. An exponent of the collo-
dion process he developed many tricks of the trade to
combat the stress and strain of taking photographs in
a country where there were very few roads. His trials
and tribulations along with other interesting anecdotes
are recorded in the British Journal of Photography De-
cember 25, 1874. Altogether he made 250 photographs
which he considered to be the pick of his collection.
He exhibited these in London while supervising the
production of his book, Rotomahana—the Boiling
Springs of New Zealand, 1875. With descriptive notes
by the distinguished Austrian explorer and academic
Ferdinand von Hochstetter, his plates were printed using
the newly discovered Autotype Process. The quality and
presentation of his work at the 1873 Vienna International
Exhibition and Rotomahana earned him a decoration
from the Austrian Court.
In later years he moved to Australia where amongst
other things he gave magic lantern lectures about his
adventures in New Zealand and how he had to ford snow
fed rivers in the Southern Alps and journeyed through
territory in where the hostile Maori chief Hone Heke
and his raiding parties were known to reside.
While Mundy and other photographers were coming
to grips with landscape photography in New Zealand,
Dr. Alfred Charles Barker 1819 –1873 was documenting
his family and friends in Christchurch. Barker came to
New Zealand from England in 1850 on one of the fi rst
four ships that founded the Canterbury settlement. When
a riding accident curtailed his activities as a medical
practitioner, he gave up his practice and concentrated on
Civil Administration, Land Deals and Photography. His
earliest adventures into photography are dated 1858 and
include the way Christchurch was founded on swamp-
lands which had to be drained before the town could
be laid out to a grid pattern bounded by four avenues
a mile apart. Using equipment that he improvised for
his needs, his work is noted for his outdoor portraits
which were made in his Œstudio—the front garden of
his house. Despite a somewhat cavalier attitude towards
certain technical disciplines like using odd bits of glass
which he crudely shaped to fi t his camera, his portraits
reveal personal characteristics of many of his sitters.
A distinguishing feature of his work is a series of self
portraits which he made from 1858 to shortly before he
died in 1873. These tell of the hardships colonial life
held for him.
John Kinder 1819–1903 who was born in London
came to New Zealand in 1855 and took up a position as
headmaster at the Church of England Grammar School
in Auckland. A brilliant draughtsman and watercolour-
ist, he took up photography around 1860 and quickly
mastered the collodion process. Because a considerable
number of his photographs replicate some of his water-
colour studies, an observer might be drawn to conclude
that he acquired his photographic skills purely as an aide
memoir for his painting. Contradicting this are his more
informal photographs which disclose a sensitive eye for
studies which range from a Maori youth selling fruit
on an Auckland Street, to friends and neighbors posed
outside their houses. Possibly the most entrancing are
a series of photographs of his wife Celia who posed for
him on a number of occasions. In comparison to Barker,
Kinder’s studies are extremely formal and correct in
every detail. They reveal a meticulous person whose
approach to the visual arts were based strictly on the
conventions of 19th century art.
Women photographers for the most part in New Zea-
land during the 19th century, were confi ned to assisting
their husbands. Elizabeth Pulman 1836–1900 who was
born in Cheshire, went beyond these limitations upon the
death of her husband in 1871 and took over the control
of their studio in Auckland. With her son Frederick, she
carried on a very successful business which was noted
for its fi ne selection of Maori portraits.
Another notable contributor to the photographic
documentation of New Zealand was James Bragge
1833 -1908 who was born in South Shields and traveled
with his wife and family to Wellington in 1864. His
photographs show how Wellington changed in stature
from a sleepy Provincial Town to a Capital City with
the transfer of Central Government from Auckland in- This episode in the development of the capital was
made all the more dramatic with injections of capital
from overseas which had been negotiated by the then
Prime Minister Julius Vogel in the 1870s. Bragge’s com-
mitment to large format photography with 16 × 14 inch
glass plate negatives, leaves nothing in doubt over the