A chunk of Northland's photographic history has been sold to an American photo archive.
Fairfax Media - which owns The Whangarei Leader, The Bay Chronicle, The Northern News and The Dargaville and Districts News as well as national and regional newspapers - plans to start shipping its old photos to Rogers Photo Archive next week. Prints will go first with negatives to follow later this year.
The company, based in Little Rock, Arkansas, specialises is restoring, scanning and ''monetising'' photo archives. It will send digital versions of the photos back to New Zealand but will retain the originals.
The deal means the end of local efforts to digitise The Northern News photo archive, which sparked a flurry of letters to the editor and protests on Fairfax Facebook pages.
Debbie Beadle, of the Kaikohe Photographic Centre, had a verbal agreement to scan the newspaper's old photos and place them online for people to identify. While prints could be ordered from her shop or The Northern News, she said her primary goal was to create a community database allowing people to reconnect with old photos of friends and family.