How a 5000-image Gisborne archive earned Unesco Memory of the World status

Tairāwhiti Museum photographic curator Dudley Meadows with Jen Gully at an evening to celebrate the inclusion of the WF Crawford photographic collection in the Unesco Memory of the World Register.

A casual chat over morning tea led to a Tairāwhiti Museum collection being included in a register of international stature.

Museum staff last week hosted the formal inclusion of the William Fitzgerald Crawford photographic collection in the Unesco Memory of the World Register.

The world programme was launched in 1992 and Unesco NZ launched its own arm in 2010.

It now has a total of 56 registrations, starting with Te Tiriti o Waitangi and working through items from the papers of Janet Frame to recordings from New Zealand’s World War II Mobile Broadcasting Unit.

“We were just chatting in the tea room when [Heritage NZ regional services director] Pam Bain said the William Fitzgerald Crawford photographic collection should really be nominated for the register,” museum curator of photography Dudley Meadows said.

“That kicked off years of work that landed us where we are today.”

The collection of 5000 glass plate negatives created by Crawford (1844-1915) is considered to be an unparalleled record of the development of Gisborne and the district between 1874 and 1912.

“But the story starts with a single photo ... one of Crawford himself who, as a 20-year-old, decided he would head from Ireland to New Zealand where he would stay for just three years to make his fortune,” Meadows said.

“That was in 1864 and, despite those early intentions, by 1874 he had landed in Gisborne and embarked on decades of life as a bushman, brewer, publican, scientist, journalist and, of course, photographer.”

The Unesco registrations states that Crawford’s images cover nearly all aspects of life from important events to simple rural living.

According to nomination supporter Karl Johnstone, at a time when many visual records reinforced colonial ideologies of Māori decline, “Crawford’s lens offered a counterpoint, portraying Māori as dynamic, expressive and resilient”.

Tairāwhiti Museum director Tapunga Nepe said the registration was a celebration of his team’s work in preserving the collection and promoting the enjoyment and understanding of it within the community and beyond.

Much of the credit for that went to Meadows, who had spent more than two decades cleaning and conserving the 5000 plates, and making some 1500 copies for an ever-growing digital database.

That was important to Unesco spokesman Sean McMahon, chair of the Unesco NZ Memory of the World Trust.

“This wonderful museum cares for and preserves this important collection in which Crawford faithfully captures life in Gisborne over the years he was active,” he said.

“The digitisation of the images is something we wholeheartedly support as a way of making them accessible for all time, and to all.”

Representing donors at last week’s presentation of the inscription were family members including Jen Gully, wife of Crawford’s great-grandson, the late John Gully, who in 1976 gifted the entire collection to the museum.

“It has been wonderful to see the care the collection has had over the years,” she said. “We sure did the right thing in gifting it to Tairāwhiti Museum.”